Laid off from Wolfspeed.

What Wolfspeed layoffs have meant for employees

Wolfspeed's first plan, set out in a November 2024 8-K, centered on shutting the older Durham device fab as it moved from 150mm to 200mm silicon carbide devices. The company also shut its Farmers Branch, Texas, site in fiscal 2025 as it consolidated epitaxy work, its 2026 annual report says. The cuts didn't stay with the fabs. In the last two quarters of fiscal 2025 the plan widened, primarily in Materials Products operations and supporting roles, and the cut Wolfspeed made after bankruptcy was tied in part to weaker demand for 150mm substrates. If you worked in materials operations at Durham or Siler City, the reasons the company gave grew over those rounds, from its own change of wafer size to include weaker demand for its 150mm substrates.

Not every exit was a layoff. When the November 2024 cuts were announced, the company's spokeswoman told Business North Carolina 10% of roles had already gone that year through attrition and voluntary early exits, and the annual report describes a voluntary separation program for a limited number of employees who qualified by age and years of service. The company books those early exits inside its severance totals, so its severance figures cover people who chose to leave as well as people who were let go. If you're comparing a package with a former colleague's, whether theirs was an early exit or a layoff matters, since the filings lump the two together.

If you were hired for Siler City, being at a new site didn't keep a job out of the cuts. Business North Carolina's November 2024 story described Siler City as a government-incentivized wafer factory Wolfspeed was still standing up, one of two new factories that had been expensive to build. The facility had its conditional certificate of occupancy when the company's March 2025 filing announced cuts aimed mostly at materials work there and in Durham, and the June 2025 notice came while Wolfspeed still described the plant as on track to open. The company told WKTV that June cut was to align staffing with near-term customer demand and was independent of its capital-structure review, in the same statement that called Siler City central to its long-term silicon carbide growth strategy. Wolfspeed filed for Chapter 11 later that month.

Bankruptcy ended neither the cuts nor the severance. Wolfspeed left Chapter 11 on September 29, 2025, its emergence filing says, and the annual report says it then kept right-sizing its operations with two more headcount plans. Both booked severance under ASC 712-10, the accounting rule for postemployment benefits, which is the rule Wolfspeed applied to the 2025 plan's involuntary severance, provided under what the report calls an ongoing benefit arrangement. The filings record severance costs for both post-emergence plans, and the first of them fell in the same quarter, ended December 28, 2025, in which the Durham device fab stopped production, as the 10-Q for that quarter records.

If you're in North Carolina, severance affects which weeks the state counts as unemployment. Under North Carolina's separation pay law, a week entirely covered by pay someone receives because of a separation isn't a week of unemployment, and paid time off that went unused, paid under a written policy in place before the separation, doesn't count as that kind of pay. A lump sum is allocated by the week, so it doesn't land in a single week, and a week it covers in full isn't counted as unemployment either. The rest of North Carolina's rules are on our North Carolina unemployment benefits page, and Texas's, for anyone from the Farmers Branch site, are on the Texas unemployment benefits page.

A sourced history of Wolfspeed layoffs

• Fiscal 2026's last quarter, a further 6% cut approved

  Wolfspeed approved a cut of about 6% of its employees in the last quarter of its fiscal year, which ended June 28, 2026, the second headcount plan it started after leaving bankruptcy, its 2026 annual report says.

• Late 2025, an 8% cut after the bankruptcy exit

  Wolfspeed carried out a headcount cut in the quarter ended December 28, 2025, its December-quarter 10-Q shows, and its annual report sizes it at about 8%, with $7.5 million in severance.

• June 2025, Siler City materials facility notice

  Wolfspeed's June 9 notice, in our tracker, covered 73 jobs at its Siler City materials facility, which the company told WKTV remained on track to open.

• March 2025, about 180 jobs in Durham and Siler City

  Wolfspeed said it was cutting about 180 employees, primarily in materials operations at its Durham and Siler City locations, in a March 2025 filing.

• November 2024, a 20% cut and the Durham fab's closing

  Wolfspeed planned a headcount reduction of about 20% and the closing of its Durham device fab, notifying employees from November 6, its November 2024 8-K said. A spokeswoman told Business North Carolina the company's transition program for affected employees included severance and outplacement.

• October 2024, Farmers Branch, Texas, site notice

  Wolfspeed's October 23 notice, in our tracker, listed 73 jobs in Farmers Branch from November 23, and the company's fiscal 2026 10-K says it closed operations there during fiscal 2025, consolidating epitaxy production.

• August 2024, planned closing of the Durham device fab

  Wolfspeed said it would shift device production faster to its Mohawk Valley fab while it assessed when to close its 150mm Durham device fab, and look across its footprint for operating costs to cut, its fiscal 2024 results release said.

What to do if you're laid off from Wolfspeed

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Wolfspeed's biggest hubs: North Carolina, Texas. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Wolfspeed's hub states run: North Carolina, Texas, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.