Layoffs in Massachusetts.

Where Massachusetts layoffs have been concentrated

Biotech is the through-line. Takeda filed four separate Massachusetts notices, one of them 247 jobs in Cambridge, while Sage Therapeutics, ImmunityBio, Charles River Laboratories and Revvity each cleared three, and EMD Serono noticed 70 in Billerica. This is what a funding cycle turning looks like in the state that hosts more of it than anywhere else, a steady sequence of mid-size cuts across a few square miles rather than one headline.

The other Massachusetts institution shows up too, and less happily. Hampshire College noticed 199 jobs in Amherst, higher education's enrollment squeeze recorded like any employer's. Community Healthlink filed repeatedly out of Worcester and Leominster, its notice count reflecting revisions to one long-running reduction rather than several separate ones.

Beneath those, the ordinary economy, SynQor's 250 in Boxborough, Smithfield's 190 in Springfield, Clover's 182 in Cambridge, AlerisLife's 179 in Newton. Worth noting our Massachusetts record starts in 2021, so this page describes the present era rather than the deep past.

The companies that keep filing in Massachusetts

Massachusetts repeat filers cluster in life sciences and health services, with revisions to a single reduction sometimes producing several notices. Most notices since 2023.

• Community Healthlink, Inc. (aka CHL) · 5 notices since 2023
• Revvity, Inc. · 5 notices since 2023
• Feeney Brothers Excavation, LLC · 5 notices since 2023
• Takeda Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc · 4 notices since 2023
• Charles River Laboratories · 4 notices since 2023
• ImmunityBio, Inc. · 4 notices since 2023
• Sage Therapeutics, Inc. · 3 notices since 2023
• Making Opportunities Count, Inc. · 3 notices since 2023

Read the biotech names on this list as one story rather than several. Takeda, Sage, ImmunityBio, Charles River and Revvity were resizing as programs ended and capital tightened, the normal metabolism of the industry, which is cold comfort if your program was the one that ended. The practical read is that these employers hire from each other, so the network inside this list is the fastest route back in.

What Massachusetts law asks of employers, and what it only suggests

Massachusetts has a plant closing law, and untangling it from federal WARN is the difference between expecting a warning and getting one. Under the state's plant closing provisions, advance notice to affected employees is framed as a voluntary declaration in writing, meaning the statute invites it rather than commanding it.

What the statute does require is reporting, and it is worth separating three things people routinely merge. First, section 71B obliges an employer closing a facility to report promptly to the commissioner, with the information needed to work out affected employees' benefit rights. That is a reporting duty triggered by the closing, not an advance-notice rule, and the statute sets no employer-size floor for it. Second, the 60-day advance notice everyone has in mind is federal WARN's, which generally starts at 100 employees. Nothing in Massachusetts law lowers that bar. Third, and separately from both, the state's WARN page asks employers with 50 or more employees to submit a notice at least 60 days ahead. Read that as the agency's operating guidance, which is what produces the weekly report this page draws from, rather than as a statutory obligation at that headcount.

The statute also carries something most states lack, a reemployment assistance benefit for workers separated by a covered plant closing, administered alongside regular unemployment. It is worth asking about by name during your claim, because it is easy to miss and nobody volunteers it.

What happens after a WARN notice is filed in Massachusetts

Notices flow to the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development and set MassHire's Rapid Response in motion, which for the life-science corridor is genuinely practiced, the same career centers have handled wave after wave of lab and clinical reductions.

Claim through our Massachusetts benefits page, and when you file, ask explicitly whether the plant closing provisions apply to your separation. The reemployment assistance benefit in the statute exists for exactly that circumstance and is not applied automatically to every claim.

Lab and clinical staff have one advantage worth using deliberately. The corridor's employers sit within commuting distance of each other and hire continuously from the same pool, so a targeted search across a dozen named companies frequently beats a broad one, and the networking article covers how to run that without it feeling like begging.

Use what Massachusetts owes you

• Ask at claim time whether the plant closing provisions cover your separation, since the statute's reemployment assistance benefit attaches to those events and is not offered by default.
• Do not read the absence of a personal warning as an employer breaking the law here, the state's notice to employees is written as voluntary, so the meaningful question is whether the employer met the federal act's requirements instead.
• Life-science workers, map the dozen employers within commuting distance and work them by name, this corridor rehires internally more than it advertises.
• Equity-heavy biotech packages deserve real attention before signing, the severance article covers what to check when a chunk of your compensation is unvested.
• File through our Massachusetts page in week one, and if a notice period is running, treat it as paid search time rather than waiting for the last day.

The biggest layoffs in Massachusetts's record

Our Massachusetts records open in 2021, which means they capture the biotech correction and nothing before it. Annual volume has run remarkably steady since, in the eighty-to-ninety notice range each year, a state whose layoffs arrive continuously rather than in shocks.

That steadiness is itself the finding. Where Ohio's log fills with terminal plant events and Florida's with tourism collapse, Massachusetts produces a constant drip of mid-size professional reductions, the signature of an economy built on research funding cycles and institutional budgets rather than production lines.

The deeper history, the mill closings that defined the state's earlier industrial era, sits outside our archive. What we hold describes the knowledge economy's version of the same thing.

Common questions