WARN Act mass layoff and plant closure notices in Caldwell, Idaho, updated daily.
Workers affected by industry sector
| Company | City | Employees | Notice Date | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transit Management of Canyon County, Inc | Caldwell | 28 | 2025-07-31 | |
| Big Tex Trailer (ATW) | Caldwell | 127 | 2024-03-11 | |
| Koontz-Wagner Custom Controls | Caldwell | 51 | 2018-07-11 | |
| Simplot Food Group | Caldwell | 262 | 2013-11-01 | |
| Rhodes Bakery | Caldwell | 49 | 2013-01-08 |
# Economic Analysis: Caldwell, Idaho Layoff Landscape
Caldwell, Idaho has experienced 517 worker separations across five WARN Act notices since 2013, establishing the city as a meaningful site of labor market disruption within Canyon County. While five notices over a twelve-year span may appear modest in raw count, the concentration of these reductions within specific employers and compressed timeframes reveals vulnerability in Caldwell's economic base. The 517 affected workers represent a substantial portion of the city's workforce, particularly when measured against Caldwell's total employed population of roughly 35,000-40,000 people. This translates to approximately 1.3-1.5 percent of the local workforce experiencing permanent job loss through formal WARN notifications, a threshold that typically triggers noticeable secondary economic effects in small-to-medium sized metros.
What distinguishes Caldwell's layoff pattern is the front-loading of disruption. Two notices filed in 2013 account for an unknown portion of the total 517 workers, while subsequent years show intermittent but significant events. The 2025 filing, paired with the most recent 2024 notice, suggests the city is entering a new cycle of workforce adjustment, warranting close monitoring of whether this represents isolated incidents or a broader economic downturn in the region.
Simplot Food Group dominates Caldwell's WARN Act history with a single notice affecting 262 workers, representing over 50 percent of all layoff activity tracked in the city. This scale of reduction from a single employer underscores the concentration risk inherent in Caldwell's manufacturing and food processing economy. Simplot's operations in Caldwell center on potato processing and frozen potato products—sectors deeply tied to commodity agricultural pricing, input cost volatility, and capital-intensive production efficiency drives. The company's decision to reduce workforce size likely reflects either capacity rationalization in response to declining demand, automation implementation to improve production efficiency, or both. Given Simplot's position as one of the world's largest private food companies with global supply chain leverage, individual facility adjustments may reflect broader corporate portfolio optimization rather than local market conditions alone.
Big Tex Trailer (ATW) filed a single WARN notice affecting 127 workers, making it the second-largest source of layoffs and accounting for roughly 25 percent of total displacement. Big Tex manufactures enclosed trailers and utility equipment—a capital goods sector highly sensitive to business cycles and construction activity. Trailer manufacturing demand tracks closely with construction spending, freight volumes, and agricultural equipment purchases. A 127-worker reduction suggests either substantial demand contraction in the company's markets or significant automation/facility consolidation.
The remaining three employers—Koontz-Wagner Custom Controls (51 workers), Rhodes Bakery (49 workers), and Transit Management of Canyon County, Inc (28 workers)—each file single notices representing smaller but still meaningful displacements. Combined, these three account for 128 workers, or roughly 25 percent of total WARN activity. Their diversity suggests Caldwell's workforce reductions are not concentrated in a single industry but instead reflect company-specific circumstances across manufacturing, food production, and transportation services.
Caldwell's WARN notices reveal only two industries in the available data: Accommodation & Food Services (49 workers, one notice) and Transportation (28 workers, one notice). However, this classification captures only 77 of 517 workers, leaving 440 workers unaccounted for in the industry breakdown. This data gap likely obscures the true sectoral composition, but the presence of food processing (Simplot) and manufacturing (Big Tex, Koontz-Wagner) indicates that Caldwell's economy depends substantially on goods production and processing rather than service sectors.
Manufacturing and food processing share common structural vulnerabilities: both face chronic pressure from automation, both experience cyclical demand fluctuations, and both operate within thin margin environments where efficiency drives become existential business imperatives. Caldwell's agricultural heritage creates natural clustering in these sectors, but this same specialization creates diversification risk. When commodity prices decline, when agricultural production consolidates, or when manufacturing investment flows toward lower-cost regions, impacts concentrate in cities like Caldwell.
The presence of Big Tex Trailer's disruption indicates exposure to construction and capital goods cycles. When commercial construction, residential development, or agricultural equipment investment slows, trailer manufacturers face immediate demand destruction. These industries move together, creating synchronized shock risk for Caldwell's economy.
The temporal distribution of WARN notices reveals a fragmented pattern rather than a consistent trend. Two notices in 2013 represent the initial recorded period, followed by a six-year gap until 2018. Another six-year gap separates 2018 from 2024, with 2025 marking renewed activity. This pattern suggests episodic rather than continuous structural decline, though the recency of 2024-2025 notices warrants careful interpretation.
The 2013 cluster likely reflects fallout from the 2008-2009 financial crisis and subsequent recovery period, when manufacturing and food processing faced demand destruction and capacity rationalization. The 2024-2025 cluster emergence could indicate economic contraction beginning in late 2024, though insufficient detail prevents definitive causal attribution. Between these clusters, Caldwell's economy evidently maintained sufficient stability to avoid WARN-triggering reductions, suggesting underlying resilience or successful employer adaptation during the 2014-2023 period.
A 517-worker reduction spread across multiple employers creates ripple effects extending well beyond direct job loss. Each displaced worker typically reduced household spending, weakens local retail and service demand, and may relocate entirely, reducing the tax base. Secondary effects cascade through supply chains—companies providing inputs or services to affected employers face reduced demand. Tertiary effects emerge as multiplier effects throughout the local economy. Economic literature typically estimates multiplier effects of 1.5 to 2.0, meaning each primary job loss potentially eliminates an additional 0.5 to 1.0 indirect and induced jobs.
For Caldwell, this suggests the 517 direct layoffs could potentially eliminate 250-500 additional indirect and induced employment positions across the broader economy, creating total employment impact potentially exceeding 750-1,000 jobs. Income losses accumulate across displaced workers, their suppliers, and downstream service providers. Housing markets respond to sustained employment reductions through price pressure and reduced demand. Schools face enrollment pressure if families relocate.
The concentration of layoffs among capital-intensive employers (food processing, trailer manufacturing, custom controls) means wage levels among affected workers likely exceed average service sector compensation, amplifying income loss severity. Caldwell residents losing manufacturing jobs cannot readily substitute equivalent-wage service positions, creating income discontinuity and potential long-term community impact.
Caldwell functions as Canyon County's largest city, making its employment stability consequential for regional economic health. The city's economy overlaps substantially with Nampa, just ten miles south, creating a merged labor market where Caldwell residents commute to Nampa employment and vice versa. Caldwell's manufacturing and processing focus positions it distinctly within Idaho's broader economy, where service sectors and technology increasingly dominate Boise's growth while rural regions depend on agriculture, forestry, and traditional manufacturing.
Idaho's statewide economy has grown substantially since 2013, driven by in-migration and technology sector expansion, primarily concentrated in Boise. Caldwell's apparent inability to participate equally in this growth—evidenced by recurring layoff cycles while state employment trends upward—suggests local economic structures are not capturing broader regional prosperity. The city's reliance on commodity-dependent sectors (agricultural processing) and cyclical capital goods manufacturing (trailers) creates structural mismatch with state growth drivers.
The 2024-2025 WARN notices arrive during a period of Idaho statewide economic resilience, making Caldwell's disruptions appear sectoral rather than cyclical, suggesting structural headwinds specific to traditional manufacturing and agricultural processing rather than broad recession. This distinction carries important implications for workforce development and economic diversification priorities in Caldwell's future planning.
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