Layoffs in Colorado.

Where Colorado layoffs have been concentrated

Amentum and Battelle top Colorado's filing list with 16 and 13 notices, and every single one is in Pueblo. They were two of the five contractors destroying the chemical weapons stored there, work that ended when the last munition in Colorado's stockpile was destroyed in June 2023. What the archive records since is the unwinding, dozens at a time, over three years, in a city of roughly a hundred thousand people. Battelle's largest single notices ran 232, 234 and 193 jobs.

That is a different kind of layoff from a company failing. The mission succeeded, and the jobs ended because of it, which is cold comfort in a labor market that absorbed them all at once. It also explains why Colorado's repeat-filer list looks nothing like other states'.

The rest of the record is ordinary and statewide. PNC Bank noticed 777 jobs in the Jefferson County area, Alan Ritchey 729 in Adams County, Eagle Rock Distribution 514 across the Denver metro, Banner Health 351 in Larimer, Comcast 302 in Arapahoe and Douglas, and Dish Network filed five separate times as the satellite business contracted.

The companies that keep filing in Colorado

Colorado's repeat filers are dominated by two federal contractors doing the same job in the same city. Most notices since 2023.

• Amentum · 14 notices since 2023
• Battelle · 12 notices since 2023
• TIAA · 5 notices since 2023
• Dish Network LLC · 5 notices since 2023
• Block · 4 notices since 2023
• Nordstrom Credit Bank · 4 notices since 2023
• Carestream Health · 4 notices since 2023
• Newmont · 3 notices since 2023

Amentum's sixteen and Battelle's thirteen are the same event seen twice, a completed federal mission releasing its workforce in stages, and reading them as two struggling companies would miss the point entirely. Below them the list turns normal, Block, TIAA and Nordstrom's credit bank trimming the way financial employers do everywhere, and Dish shrinking as satellite television does.

Colorado workers rely on the federal notice act

Colorado has not enacted a mini-WARN act. It is absent from the roster of states that did, so notice rights here come entirely from the federal act, with its 100-employee coverage, 60-day requirement and site-based thresholds.

Federal contractor workers should know one wrinkle that the Pueblo record illustrates. When work ends because a government mission completes rather than because a company fails, the federal act still applies on its ordinary terms, and a staged release of workers across many months can leave individual rounds below the thresholds even though the total is large. The size and timing of your specific group is what decides whether notice was owed.

The state's labor department maintains the public WARN list this page reads from, with rapid response services attached when an event qualifies.

What happens after a WARN notice is filed in Colorado

Filings land with Colorado's labor department and set the regional workforce centers moving. For a concentrated event like Pueblo's, the local center becomes the single most useful room in the county, because it knows which employers are absorbing the released workforce.

Workers leaving federal contract roles carry two things worth protecting deliberately, a security clearance with a reinstatement window that outlives the job, and specialized certifications that other regulated employers value. Both are assets in the next search, and both are easier to keep current than to restore.

Get the claim open on our Colorado benefits page inside the first week whatever a transition package promises, and if the layoff was large and the notice short, the federal back-pay remedy is worth checking with an employment lawyer before assuming a completed mission excuses it.

Use what Colorado owes you

• Pueblo-area workers, the depot wind-down is a known, documented event, and naming it plainly in interviews works in your favour, the mission finished, it did not fail.
• Pin down your clearance status and its reinstatement deadline before separation, because that paperwork is the quickest door into another federal contractor.
• Open the claim through our Colorado unemployment page within days, and confirm how transition pay interacts with benefit timing before budgeting around either.
• If your group was one of several released across months, ask an employment lawyer whether the rounds aggregate under the federal thresholds, staged reductions sometimes cross lines that each round alone does not.
• In a concentrated local market, weigh commuting range and retraining paths early, since a few hundred similar workers entering one small labor market at once changes the odds on any single local application.

The biggest layoffs in Colorado's record

Colorado's archive begins in 2015 and peaks, like almost every state's, in 2020 at 271 notices. The years since have settled into the sixty-to-ninety range, a steady rate for a state of its size.

What distinguishes the record is concentration rather than volume. A single small city accounts for the two most frequent filers in the entire state, which is unusual and reflects how much federal work Colorado hosts relative to its population, from Pueblo's depot to the defense employers around Colorado Springs.

The Denver metro's contribution looks like anywhere else's, banking, telecom, distribution and healthcare trimming in turn. The federal layer sitting on top of that ordinary economy is the Colorado-specific part.

Common questions