Layoffs in Washington.

Where Washington layoffs have been concentrated

Read a year of Washington filings and the biggest numbers are not Amazon's. They belong to the harvest, Gebbers Farms filed for 3,465 workers in Brewster, Stemilt for 1,561 in Wenatchee, Agrimacs for 1,368 in Chelan, all in the same November window. These are season-end separations of largely agricultural workforces, filed as WARN events, and they inflate the state's raw totals every fall. Knowing that quirk is the difference between reading Washington's numbers and misreading them.

The tech economy tells its own story at nearly the same scale. Amazon filed for 2,303 Washington jobs in January and another 2,198 in April, its home-state share of the corporate cuts, and Meta listed 1,395 King County jobs in July. Microsoft has filed eight notices in three years, Starbucks seven from its Seattle support center, and Expedia keeps reappearing as travel tech consolidates.

What you will not find in these numbers is most small-company pain. Until mid-2025 Washington had no state notice law at all, only the federal floor, and cuts below federal thresholds surfaced nowhere. That changed in a way that matters to everyone reading this page after July 2025, which is the next section's story.

The companies that keep filing in Washington

Washington's repeat filers are its anchor tenants, the names below have filed most frequently since 2023.

• Microsoft · 8 notices since 2023
• Starbucks · 6 notices since 2023
• Amazon · 5 notices since 2023
• Meta Platforms, Inc · 4 notices since 2023
• Expedia, Inc. · 4 notices since 2023
• Nordstrom Credit Bank · 4 notices since 2023
• Jack in the Box · 3 notices since 2023
• Oracle America, Inc. · 3 notices since 2023

Microsoft leading this list is itself news, the company spent decades famous for avoiding mass layoffs, and eight filings in three years mark the cultural change. Fred Meyer's count is the quieter signal worth noticing, grocery consolidation grinding through the Kroger empire one store at a time.

Washington's new WARN law, and the date that decides your rights

Washington joined the mini-WARN states barely a year ago. The Securing Timely Notification and Benefits for Laid-Off Employees Act took effect July 27, 2025, and it means a Washington layoff today runs under state rules that a layoff in early 2025 did not.

The act, codified at chapter 49.45 RCW, picks up employers with a Washington headcount of 50 full-timers or more, owing 60 days of written notice, to the Employment Security Department and to affected workers, before a business closing or a mass layoff of 50 or more. That reaches well below the federal act's 100-employee floor, and it has no one-third-of-the-site test for the 50-worker trigger.

Two provisions are distinctly Washington. Workers on the state's paid family and medical leave get specific protection in a covered layoff, and the notice runs through ESD, the same agency that pays unemployment, which in practice tightens the handoff between losing the job and starting the claim.

What happens after a WARN notice is filed in Washington

Notices land at the Employment Security Department, which publishes the log this page draws from and routes affected sites toward its WorkSource centers, Washington's one-stop shops for claims help, placement, and retraining referrals.

Because the notice law is new, employer compliance is uneven, some HR departments still operate on federal-only muscle memory. If you were cut after July 27, 2025 in a group of 50 or more and got less than 60 days, that is exactly the situation the new act exists for, and it is worth an employment lawyer's look precisely because the case law is young and employers are still testing where the lines sit.

For the seasonal workforce east of the mountains, the annual filings mostly reflect scheduled season ends rather than surprises. The benefit claim runs identically either way, and WorkSource offices in Wenatchee and Yakima process that cycle every year at volume.

Use what Washington owes you

• Date-check your layoff against July 27, 2025. Washington's notice law only reaches cuts after that date, so which side of the line you fall on decides whether you have a state claim at all or only the federal floor.
• If you got less than 60 days in a 50-plus layoff after that date, the state act may well have been violated, and the newness of the law makes these worth a plaintiff-side lawyer's evaluation.
• On paid family or medical leave when the cut came, say so to any lawyer you consult, the new act carries specific protections for you that even many HR departments haven't internalized yet.
• File your claim through our Washington unemployment page, which carries the current amounts, including the highest maximum weekly benefit in the country, and the ESD portal link.
• Seasonal agricultural workers, the WorkSource centers in the valley towns process the season-end cycle every year, and the claim is yours whether or not you plan to return next season.

The biggest layoffs in Washington's record

Washington's log is the Boeing story for most of its history. Our archive holds 64 Boeing filings, and the 2020 entries alone list more than 8,500 Washington jobs, the pandemic collapse of air travel landing on Everett and Renton in one terrible year. The state's 2020 total, 268 filings covering 47,557 jobs, remains its modern record.

The 2009 spike tells the same dependence from the earlier crisis, and the years between the crises run quiet, which is the shape of a state whose layoff history was, for decades, the fortunes of one company.

What is different now is diversification of the pain. The past year's 164 filings and 36,731 listed jobs split between tech consolidation, retail grind, and the agricultural cycle, three economies shedding for three unrelated sets of reasons. Boeing is, for once, not the story.

Common questions