Layoffs in Texas.

Where Texas layoffs have been concentrated

The past year's filings map the state's whole industrial spread. Tyson's wind-down of a shift at its Amarillo beef plant listed 1,761 jobs, the year's largest event, panhandle meatpacking rather than anything Austin. RNDC, the liquor distribution giant, filed for 689 jobs in Grand Prairie and 588 in Houston as its California exit rippled home. FedEx listed 856 at a Coppell logistics operation. Dallas distribution, Houston energy services, border-town manufacturing, the log touches all of it.

The retail unwind shows up here at chain scale. When 99 Cents Only liquidated, its Texas stores generated 31 separate filings, and the bankruptcy-driven pattern repeats through the log, healthcare operators, auto-parts chains, and daycare networks filing store by store as they contract.

But the most important thing about Texas filings is what never appears. With no state law lowering the bar, an employer under 100 workers, or one cutting fewer than 50 at a site, files nothing, warns nobody, and appears in no log. Texas's real layoff count runs further above its filed numbers than in states whose own laws force more filings, which is worth holding in mind every time this page's totals look calm.

The companies that keep filing in Texas

Repeat filers in the Texas log skew toward contract operators and chains in slow liquidation, the employers whose structure produces paperwork in series.

• Sodexo (Alcon Labs) · 4 notices since 2023
• Expedia Group Inc. (Austin) · 4 notices since 2023
• Exxon Mobil (Big Lake) · 4 notices since 2023
• Compass Group · 3 notices since 2023
• Spirit Airlines (IAH) · 3 notices since 2023
• GoldStar Transit (Waco ISD) · 3 notices since 2023
• Tyson Foods (Fort Worth Distribution Center) · 3 notices since 2023
• Firebird Bulk Carriers, Inc.(Tarzan) · 3 notices since 2023

The names here are steady rather than dramatic, energy operators, staffing and food-service contractors, an airline in retreat. Exxon's four track fields changing hands, and Sodexo's track client sites turning over. Worth knowing that Texas's raw log flatters certain employers into looking far more frequent than they are, a single chain bankruptcy can post thirty-plus location rows under one notice date, which is why this list counts notices instead.

What notice Texas layoffs legally require

Texas is a federal-floor state. There is no Texas WARN act, no state notice requirement, and no statutory severance, only the federal act applies, and it binds employers of 100-plus full-time workers cutting either 500 people at a site, or 50-plus who make up one worker in three at that site, or closing a plant outright with 50 or more affected.

The gaps in that floor are where Texans get surprised. A 400-person company cutting 120 across three cities can owe no notice at all. A 90-person company closing entirely owes none. The federal act's 60 days is real when it applies, but it applies to a narrower slice of layoffs than most workers assume, and nothing in Texas law widens it.

What Texas does do is publish. The Texas Workforce Commission posts WARN notices it receives, which is where this page's filings come from, and TWC's workforce solutions offices run the standard Rapid Response playbook for large covered events.

What happens after a WARN notice is filed in Texas

For covered layoffs, notices flow to TWC and local workforce development boards, whose Workforce Solutions offices handle everything from claim filing to retraining referrals. For the majority of Texas layoffs, the ones too small for federal WARN, there is no notice step at all, your first official interaction is the unemployment claim itself.

That reality reorders the priorities. In a state where the law buys you no warning, the runway math and the deadlines that start at termination matter more than anywhere with a 90-day cushion, because the time between learning and leaving can be an afternoon.

If your layoff was big enough for federal WARN and the warning never arrived, the path is a federal lawsuit seeking up to two months of pay and benefits, and mass cases attract firms on contingency. The federal act's own resources explain coverage, and the size test is the first question any lawyer will ask.

Use what Texas owes you

• Size your layoff against the federal tests first, 100-plus employer, and either 500 cut at your site, 50-plus amounting to one worker in three there, or a full closure. If it qualifies and your notice ran short of 60 days, a federal back-pay claim exists, and if it doesn't qualify, no notice was ever legally owed.
• Start the unemployment claim the same week the job ends, through our Texas unemployment page, because with no notice cushion, every week of delay is a week of benefits gone.
• Texas benefits replace less of a high wage than most states pay, so run the runway against the real number on our Texas page, not against what a coastal friend collected.
• Energy workers, the cycle that cut you has a rhythm, and the workforce boards in Houston and Midland have run oil-bust playbooks for decades, their retraining money is real and worth claiming.
• If your employer was one of the chains liquidating store by store, your severance leverage is nearly zero but your WARN math may still work, bankruptcy does not erase federal notice obligations by itself.

The biggest layoffs in Texas's record

Texas's log is a history of commodity cycles. The 2015 and 2016 oil crash produced 521 filings listing nearly 56,000 jobs as the shale fields went quiet, and the 2009 crisis put 408 filings into a single year. Each bust arrives, works through the service companies and suppliers, and recedes.

Then 2020 dwarfed them all, 1,195 filings covering more than 90,000 Texas jobs, the pandemic hitting energy, airlines, and hospitality simultaneously in the state that runs all three at scale.

Our Texas records reach back to 1999, deep enough to hold two oil busts, two national crises, and the long secular churn of retail in between. The through-line is velocity, Texas layoffs arrive fast, with the minimum notice law allows, which for most of them is none.

Common questions