The US labor market showed signs of rising strain as employers posted 1 WARN Act notices in September 2026, Week 1, affecting an estimated 60 workers. Filings came from 1 states and territories, with an average of 60 workers per notice.
| State | Notices | Workers |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | 1 | 60 |
| Company | Location | Workers | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Novartis | East Hanover, New Jersey | 60 |
The largest notice was filed by Novartis in East Hanover, New Jersey, reporting 60 affected workers.
After a tempestuous August that saw nearly 17,500 workers swept up in WARN notices during the first week alone last year, this September opens with an almost eerie quiet. Just one filing—Novartis shedding 60 workers from its East Hanover, New Jersey operations—represents a 99.7% collapse in affected workers year-over-year.
This isn't the labor market finding its footing. It's the pharmaceutical giant's latest cost-cutting maneuver in what's become a relentless efficiency drive under CEO Vas Narasimhan, whose "Focused Base of Innovation" strategy has been systematically pruning the company's U.S. footprint. The East Hanover facility, part of Novartis's broader administrative operations rather than core R&D, represents exactly the kind of middle-management bloat that pharmaceutical companies are quietly excising as they redirect capital toward AI-driven drug discovery and precision medicine capabilities.
What makes this filing particularly telling isn't its size—60 workers barely registers in a labor market adding hundreds of thousands of jobs monthly—but its timing and stealth. Novartis ($NVS) has been telegraphing this restructuring for months through earnings calls, speaking in euphemisms about "operational excellence" and "portfolio optimization." The company's U.S. operations have been under particular scrutiny as biosimilar competition erodes margins on key drugs and the FDA's pricing transparency initiatives squeeze profitability.
Unlike the mass layoffs that dominated headlines in 2023's tech meltdown, pharmaceutical restructuring happens in surgical increments. Sixty here, forty there—always below the media radar but collectively representing thousands of displaced workers as the industry pivots toward a more capital-intensive, technology-driven future. The real story isn't this week's lone filing, but the systematic hollowing out of pharmaceutical middle management that's been accelerating since the Inflation Reduction Act began reshaping drug pricing dynamics.
This September's silence may prove more ominous than last year's storm. When companies stop announcing layoffs, it often means they've moved beyond reactive cost-cutting to strategic workforce transformation—a shift that tends to be both more permanent and more profound for the affected industries and regions.
This report covers WARN Act filings for Week 1 of September 2026. View the full September 2026 report or download the full dataset.
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