The US labor market showed signs of rising strain as employers logged 1 WARN Act notices in May 2026, Week 3, involving roughly 107 workers. Filings came from 1 states and territories, with an average of 107 workers per notice.
| State | Notices | Workers |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | 1 | 107 |
| Industry | Notices | Workers |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | 1 | 107 |
The Retail sector dominated layoff filings with 107 workers across 1 notice.
| Company | Location | Workers | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target | Burlington, Gloucester, Middlesex, Monmouth, New Jersey | 107 |
The biggest impact was at Target in Burlington, Gloucester, Middlesex, Monmouth, New Jersey, reporting 107 affected workers.
A single WARN notice affecting 107 workers shouldn't register as economic news — except when it comes from Target ($TGT) and represents a 99.7% collapse from the same week last year's 35,362 displaced workers. This isn't labor market strength. It's the eerie calm before retailers reckon with their pandemic-era mistakes.
Target's multi-county New Jersey operation shedding 107 positions tells a story Wall Street already knows but Main Street hasn't absorbed yet. The retail giant has spent two years quietly rightsizing after its pandemic hiring spree, when supply chain chaos and stimulus-drunk consumers masked fundamental inefficiencies. With the Fed holding rates at restrictive levels and consumer spending shifting back to services, retailers face a brutal choice: margin compression or workforce reduction.
Target's stock has underperformed the S&P 500 by 180 basis points over the past quarter, reflecting investor skepticism about discretionary retail in a 5.25% fed funds environment. The company's inventory-to-sales ratio remains elevated compared to pre-2020 levels, suggesting these New Jersey cuts aren't the end but part of a methodical optimization that won't show up in dramatic WARN filings.
The week's data vacuum — just one filing across all 50 states — reveals more about corporate strategy than economic health. Companies have learned to avoid the WARN Act's 60-day disclosure requirements through targeted early retirements, voluntary buyouts, and rolling "performance improvements" that stay below statutory thresholds.
The 84% week-over-week increase in affected workers, despite identical filing counts, hints at this new reality: when companies do trigger WARN requirements, they're bundling larger workforce reductions into single notices rather than spreading cuts across multiple smaller actions.
This isn't labor market resilience. It's labor market sophistication, where the absence of bad news increasingly signals the presence of carefully managed bad news yet to surface.
This report covers WARN Act filings for Week 3 of May 2026. View the full May 2026 report or download the full dataset.
Get weekly layoff reports in your inbox
Free weekly digest of WARN Act filings and analysis.
