Datasets:

APProjects
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us-plant-closings-vs-mass-layoffs-warn-act

state stringclasses 48 values	year int64 1.99k 2.03k	closures int64 0 1.03k	layoffs int64 0 4.91k	mixed int64 0 3	unknown int64 0 1.34k	employees_closure int64 0 118k	employees_layoff int64 0 531k
AK	2,006	0	0	0	4	0	0
AK	2,007	0	0	0	1	0	0
AK	2,008	0	0	0	1	0	0
AK	2,010	0	0	0	1	0	0
AK	2,012	2	0	0	2	180	0
AK	2,013	0	0	0	1	0	0
AK	2,015	0	0	0	1	0	0
AK	2,016	1	1	0	2	168	55
AK	2,017	0	0	0	4	0	0
AK	2,018	4	0	0	3	592	0
AK	2,019	1	0	0	3	173	0
AK	2,020	0	0	0	21	0	0
AK	2,021	0	0	0	4	0	0
AK	2,022	0	0	0	1	0	0
AK	2,023	2	0	0	2	0	0
AK	2,024	0	1	0	0	0	1
AK	2,025	1	0	0	1	72	0
AK	2,026	0	0	0	1	0	0
AL	1,998	19	4	0	0	4,403	2,683
AL	1,999	39	12	0	0	6,306	2,774
AL	2,000	49	10	0	0	9,675	1,642
AL	2,001	64	18	0	0	11,285	3,000
AL	2,002	38	11	0	0	5,126	2,356
AL	2,003	47	6	0	0	11,466	1,238
AL	2,004	33	4	0	0	8,668	293
AL	2,005	27	13	0	0	3,157	2,373
AL	2,006	31	14	0	0	7,702	2,032
AL	2,007	38	9	0	0	8,210	2,132
AL	2,008	30	8	0	0	6,100	1,316
AL	2,009	89	26	0	0	11,161	3,054
AL	2,010	22	11	0	0	3,322	1,060
AL	2,011	21	15	0	0	3,909	2,106
AL	2,012	17	14	0	0	1,915	2,777
AL	2,013	27	13	0	0	5,565	2,407
AL	2,014	8	8	0	0	1,921	1,379
AL	2,015	14	16	0	0	1,296	4,347
AL	2,016	10	9	0	0	1,800	1,409
AL	2,017	4	7	0	0	1,067	1,049
AL	2,018	19	8	0	0	3,177	637
AL	2,019	10	7	0	0	1,073	774
AL	2,020	22	16	0	0	3,035	2,679
AL	2,021	4	4	0	0	497	322
AL	2,022	6	3	0	0	629	309
AL	2,023	15	15	0	0	2,786	1,605
AL	2,024	8	14	0	0	684	1,872
AL	2,025	15	16	0	0	2,221	1,293
AL	2,026	14	10	0	0	1,400	710
AZ	2,010	0	0	0	21	0	0
AZ	2,011	0	0	0	25	0	0
AZ	2,012	0	0	0	50	0	0
AZ	2,013	0	0	0	25	0	0
AZ	2,014	0	0	0	25	0	0
AZ	2,015	0	0	0	45	0	0
AZ	2,016	0	0	0	33	0	0
AZ	2,017	0	0	0	14	0	0
AZ	2,018	0	0	0	34	0	0
AZ	2,019	0	0	0	56	0	0
AZ	2,020	0	0	0	100	0	0
AZ	2,021	0	0	0	11	0	0
AZ	2,022	0	0	0	16	0	0
AZ	2,023	0	0	0	60	0	0
AZ	2,024	0	0	0	25	0	0
AZ	2,025	0	0	0	56	0	0
AZ	2,026	0	0	0	40	0	0
CA	2,014	86	223	0	0	9,400	19,888
CA	2,015	254	461	0	0	31,890	36,242
CA	2,016	293	354	0	0	30,999	31,238
CA	2,017	294	331	0	0	27,936	28,650
CA	2,018	354	326	0	0	35,939	32,340
CA	2,019	376	350	0	0	33,249	28,378
CA	2,020	912	4,905	0	0	107,280	531,159
CA	2,021	362	473	0	0	26,907	38,878
CA	2,022	261	514	0	0	21,887	31,903
CA	2,023	377	1,029	0	0	27,207	60,677
CA	2,024	520	1,064	0	0	31,854	61,847
CA	2,025	448	1,038	0	0	49,124	44,853
CA	2,026	292	690	0	0	20,443	32,595
CO	2,015	29	23	0	2	3,878	2,685
CO	2,016	31	14	0	11	3,144	1,839
CO	2,017	17	10	0	5	1,656	939
CO	2,018	17	7	0	10	1,968	992
CO	2,019	24	7	0	12	3,006	1,736
CO	2,020	93	82	3	101	11,168	12,591
CO	2,021	11	5	0	26	1,568	324
CO	2,022	14	0	1	15	2,162	0
CO	2,023	18	20	0	51	1,213	1,713
CO	2,024	20	22	0	25	1,869	1,434
CO	2,025	36	17	1	14	3,524	969
CO	2,026	14	6	0	20	2,140	439
CT	2,010	62	0	0	17	3,720	0
CT	2,011	157	0	0	25	1,555	0
CT	2,012	111	0	0	25	2,705	0
CT	2,014	17	0	0	11	1,756	0
CT	2,015	16	0	0	18	1,446	0
CT	2,016	38	0	0	18	4,839	0
CT	2,017	24	0	0	18	1,327	0
CT	2,018	28	0	0	9	3,026	0
CT	2,019	22	0	0	4	1,620	0
CT	2,020	59	0	0	67	4,586	0
CT	2,021	8	0	0	8	853	0

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US plant closings vs mass layoffs (WARN Act), normalized

The federal WARN Act is a statute about two events: a plant closing and a mass layoff. Every US state publishes its notices with that distinction buried in a free-text column — and across 48 states that column contains 475 distinct raw strings: Closure, Closing *, CL, Plant Closing, facility closure, shutdown operations, LO, WR, Mass Layoff - No Recall, Layoff Permanent, and hundreds more. About a fifth of rows leave it blank entirely.

This dataset normalizes that column into two clean axes and publishes the result daily.

The numbers (as of 2026-09-12)

	count
Notices in the archive	59,802
Classified into closing vs layoff	38,421 (64%)
Plant closings	16,674
Mass layoffs	21,720
Both terms present	27
Not classifiable	21,381
Marked permanent	13,364
Marked temporary	4,775
States covered	48

Why 64% and not 100%

Because the source does not support 100%, and inflating it would be a lie. The 21,381 unclassified rows break down as:

reason	rows	what it means
`blank_or_na`	13,439	the state published no notice type at all
`jurisdiction_or_code`	7,399	the column holds `State` / `WARN` / a numeric record code — i.e. which statute applies, not what happened. Mapping these to "layoff" would have manufactured thousands of fake rows
`unmapped`	370	the text names a cause (`loss of contract`, `sale of company`, `COVID-19`) rather than an event type
`amendment`	173	the row amends an earlier notice and restates no event type

unknown is never folded into either side to make the split look complete.

Top 10 states by plant closings

state	closings	layoffs	unclassified
CA	4,829	11,758	0
NY	2,770	1,992	239
MI	1,330	864	8
PA	769	827	291
AL	740	321	0
OR	642	711	16
WA	626	875	0
IN	588	416	178
CT	584	0	288
NE	532	182	131

Files

data/plant_closings.csv — 16,674 row-level plant-closing notices (employer, canonical employer name, location, employees affected, notice date, effective date, permanence, and the raw string it was normalized from, so you can audit every call).
data/notice_kind_by_state_year.csv — state x year counts across the full archive, including employees affected on each side.

Both regenerate in the same pipeline run that refreshes the underlying notices, so the two can never disagree.

Important limits — read before citing

These are notices, not verified job losses. A WARN notice can be amended, rescinded, or never carried out.
Normalization is conservative by design: anything that does not clearly say closing or layoff is left unknown rather than guessed.
notice_type_raw is preserved on every row so you can re-classify differently if your definition differs from ours.
Coverage is 48 states; a handful of states publish nothing machine-readable.

Daily US WARN notices (flagship) — the full normalized feed
How much notice employers actually gave — notice-period analysis
Site · This split, explained, with charts and the latest closings · Source and methodology

License CC-BY-4.0. Built from public state government records.

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