WARN Act mass layoff and plant closure notices in Overland Park, Idaho, updated daily.
| Company | City | Employees | Notice Date | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow Corporation | Overland Park | 102 | 2023-07-30 | |
| Yellow Corporation | Overland Park | 0 | 2023-07-30 | |
| Yellow Corporation | Overland Park | 0 | 2023-07-30 | |
| Yellow Corporations | Overland Park | 22,000 | 2023-07-30 |
# Overland Park Layoff Analysis
Overland Park, Idaho has experienced a severe concentration of layoff activity centered on just four WARN notices filed during 2023, affecting 22,102 workers. This figure represents an extraordinary spike in workforce displacement for what appears to be a community of modest size, suggesting that a single major employer's operational collapse or consolidation has fundamentally altered the local labor market. The sheer magnitude—over 22,000 jobs lost through formal WARN filings—indicates this event transcended typical cyclical employment adjustments and instead constituted a structural economic shock requiring sustained community and regional response.
The concentration of this disruption within a single calendar year amplifies its severity. Rather than spreading potential workforce reductions across multiple years, which would allow gradual labor market absorption and retraining opportunities, the 2023 notices compressed a massive transition into a compressed timeframe. This compression creates acute challenges for local infrastructure, social services, and individual household financial stability.
The layoff data reveals a striking pattern dominated by Yellow Corporation, which filed either under slight naming variations or represents the same entity across filings. Yellow Corporation submitted three WARN notices affecting 102 workers, while Yellow Corporations (potentially a variant or subsidiary designation) filed a single notice affecting 22,000 workers. Combined, Yellow-branded entities account for 22,102 of the 22,102 total workers affected—representing effectively 100 percent of Overland Park's documented 2023 layoff activity.
This dominance reflects Yellow Corporation's well-documented operational failure. The company, formerly known as YRC Worldwide and one of North America's largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in August 2023 after failing to secure debt restructuring. The company's Overland Park presence—likely representing a major terminal, distribution facility, or regional headquarters—made it a disproportionate employment anchor for the community. The three separate WARN notices from Yellow Corporation suggest layoffs occurred in phases or affected different facility locations or employee classifications, with the final massive notice of 22,000 workers presumably reflecting the complete workforce dissolution associated with bankruptcy liquidation.
For context, Yellow Corporation's total bankruptcy filing eliminated approximately 14,000 jobs nationwide, though the Overland Park filings suggest either inflated reporting, potential misclassification of affected workers, or inclusion of indirect employment impacts in the notice calculations. Regardless of the precise accounting methodology, the company's failure created a sudden and severe employment vacuum in Overland Park's labor market.
Although formal industry classification data is unavailable in the WARN database for these filings, Yellow Corporation's nature as a transportation and logistics company reveals the sector most dramatically affected. The trucking and freight transportation industry has faced persistent structural headwinds including excess capacity, rate compression, labor shortages, rising fuel costs, and increasing regulatory compliance burdens. For Yellow Corporation specifically, the company carried substantial legacy debt from previous acquisitions and struggled to achieve the operational efficiency improvements necessary to compete with better-capitalized rivals like J.B. Hunt, Schneider National, and Saia Inc.
The company's inability to secure debt restructuring in 2023 reflected broader industry challenges. Freight volume declined as economic growth slowed, reducing available revenue with which to service debt obligations. Meanwhile, competitors with stronger balance sheets and modern fleet technology continued improving margins, leaving highly leveraged carriers increasingly vulnerable. Yellow Corporation's collapse thus represents not an isolated corporate failure but rather an industry-wide consolidation dynamic in which weaker competitors exit the market permanently.
This sectoral dynamic has substantial implications for Overland Park. If the community developed a concentrated economic dependency on Yellow Corporation operations—with supporting logistics services, automotive services, fuel suppliers, food service vendors, and other complementary businesses all deriving revenue from terminal operations—the company's liquidation creates cascading secondary impacts extending well beyond the 22,102 directly affected workers.
WARN notice data from Overland Park covers only 2023, preventing direct year-over-year comparison. However, the fact that all four notices concentrated in a single year with no prior or subsequent filings documented indicates an absence of the cumulative erosion pattern common in declining industrial communities. Instead, Overland Park experienced what might be characterized as a "shock" event—a sudden, discrete workforce displacement rather than gradual structural decline.
This temporal concentration paradoxically complicates recovery prospects. Communities experiencing gradual layoffs often develop incremental adaptation strategies, retraining partnerships, and labor force transitions as employed workers anticipate changes and gradually shift sectors. Overland Park's workers, by contrast, faced nearly instantaneous job loss affecting the entire transportation facility operation. This simultaneity provides fewer opportunities for gradual labor market absorption and creates acute strain on unemployment insurance systems, social services, and household finances across the affected population simultaneously.
For a community of modest size, the loss of 22,102 jobs represents a potential decline of 10 to 25 percent of total employment, depending on Overland Park's actual workforce size. This scale of displacement generates immediate ripple effects across multiple dimensions of community economic activity.
Retail and service sectors dependent on worker expenditure face reduced consumer demand. Property tax revenues decline as real estate valuations respond to labor market weakness. Schools may experience enrollment shifts and revenue pressure. Healthcare providers, childcare facilities, and other service institutions see demand patterns alter. Financial institutions holding mortgages and auto loans on properties owned by affected workers face elevated default risk.
The human dimensions prove equally consequential. Displaced transportation workers in their 40s and 50s face significantly longer reemployment windows than younger workers. Pension implications matter substantially if Yellow Corporation maintained defined benefit plans—workers approaching retirement eligibility may face reduced benefits if pension funds experienced investment losses during the company's decline. Healthcare coverage disruption affects families immediately upon job loss.
Recovery capacity depends substantially on regional economic diversification and available retraining infrastructure. If Overland Park's economy relies heavily on transportation and logistics, alternative employment opportunities within reasonable commuting distance become critical to preventing sustained unemployment.
Idaho's economy has grown substantially over the past decade, driven by in-migration, technology sector expansion in Boise, and agricultural productivity. However, this growth concentrates in specific geographic areas and sectors. Rural and smaller communities reliant on traditional industries like transportation and logistics face headwinds inconsistent with statewide trends.
Overland Park's experience with Yellow Corporation's collapse reflects a localized vulnerability within a broader growth narrative. While Idaho overall experiences relative economic strength, particular communities and sectors remain exposed to consolidation dynamics and technological disruption. The state's workforce development infrastructure and economic diversification initiatives influence how effectively displaced workers transition to sustainable employment.
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