WARN Act Layoffs in Evanston, Illinois

Analysis: Layoffs in Evanston, Illinois

# Evanston's Layoff Landscape: A Mid-Sized City Grappling with Service Sector Volatility

Overview: Scale and Significance of Evanston's Workforce Disruptions

Evanston has experienced 6 WARN Act notices affecting 682 workers over the past five years, establishing it as a moderate-impact layoff zone within the Chicago metropolitan region. While this volume ranks below major corporate hubs, the concentration of disruptions within a city of roughly 74,000 residents means that workforce reductions here carry outsized consequences for local employment stability and community economic health.

The 682 workers affected by WARN notices represent a significant portion of Evanston's job base, particularly when concentrated among a handful of employers. To contextualize: if Evanston's labor force approximates 35,000 to 40,000 workers, these layoff notices have touched nearly 1.7 to 1.9 percent of the total workforce. For a city this size, such concentrations are economically material, creating ripple effects across housing demand, consumer spending, tax revenues, and municipal services.

What distinguishes Evanston's layoff pattern from national trends is its heavy skew toward essential service industries rather than manufacturing or traditional back-office operations. This reflects both Evanston's economic character as a university town and regional services hub and the specific vulnerability of food service and security operations to market disruptions and organizational restructuring.

The Compass Group Phenomenon: A Single Employer's Dominant Footprint

The most striking feature of Evanston's layoff data is the overwhelming presence of Compass Group USA, Inc. and its subsidiary operations. Across five separate WARN notices, the Compass Group ecosystem accounts for 529 workers—roughly 78 percent of all layoffs tracked in Evanston. This concentration within a single corporate entity represents a significant structural risk to the local labor market.

The notices filed by Compass Group USA, Inc. reveal a company engaged in systematic workforce restructuring. The company filed notices affecting 249 workers at its Evanston and Chicago Northwestern campuses in one filing, then submitted separate notices for 126 workers each at additional Evanston and Chicago locations. Additionally, Compass Group dba TouchPoint Support Services at Ascension Saint Francis laid off 28 workers, indicating that the parent company's footprint extends into healthcare food service operations.

This pattern suggests that Compass Group's layoffs in Evanston reflect broader corporate consolidation and operational rationalization rather than sudden economic crisis. The staggered nature of the notices—with multiple filings across different facilities and subsidiaries—points toward planned workforce reductions, facility closures, or service model transitions. Food service companies often consolidate kitchen operations, centralize meal preparation, or shift toward contract models that reduce on-site staffing requirements.

For Evanston, Compass Group's dominant role as a layoff driver creates both immediate and structural concerns. The company appears to be a major regional employer, particularly in food service operations at educational institutions and healthcare facilities. When such a large employer undertakes major restructuring, the local labor market faces compressed demand for entry-level and mid-skill workers in hospitality and food service roles.

Allied Universal and the Security Sector's Employment Volatility

Allied Universal, a major national security services company, filed 2 WARN notices affecting 153 workers combined. This represents the second-largest employer source of layoffs in Evanston, though with substantially less concentration than Compass Group.

Allied Universal's presence in Evanston's layoff data reflects the inherent volatility of the private security sector. Security contracts are typically won and lost through competitive bidding, and contract transitions frequently result in workforce disruptions as new security providers take over accounts. When Allied Universal loses a major contract or consolidates operations, affected workers often find themselves without employment despite having performed adequately in their positions.

The security services sector operates differently than other industries in terms of workforce stability. Unlike manufacturing facilities that close over years or retail operations that gradually reduce headcount, security contracts can shift overnight. A corporate campus, university, or institutional facility may decide to change security providers based on cost, service quality, or strategic review, resulting in immediate termination notices for the incumbent provider's workers.

For Evanston specifically, Allied Universal's layoffs indicate vulnerability to contract volatility within the institutional and corporate security market. The company appears to have held significant security contracts in the city, and the filing of two separate WARN notices suggests either loss of multiple contracts or a significant reduction in scope across existing accounts.

Industry Concentration: The Food Service and Security Squeeze

Evanston's layoff data reveals a pronounced concentration within two sectors: accommodation and food services accounts for 277 workers across 2 notices, while information and technology accounts for 119 workers across 1 notice. This 2.3-to-1 ratio dramatically overweights food and accommodation services relative to national workforce distribution.

Food service and accommodation represent traditionally lower-wage, higher-turnover employment categories. These sectors offer limited advancement pathways and typically provide workers with minimal bargaining power in wage and benefit negotiations. When restructuring occurs in these industries, workers face significant reemployment challenges due to limited transferable skills and credential requirements specific to hospitality work.

The information and technology sector's appearance in Evanston's WARN data, though representing only 119 workers from a single notice, suggests that high-skill sectors are not immune to workforce reductions. However, the disparity is stark: tech workers represent 17 percent of layoffs despite typically representing a much larger share of regional economic activity. This suggests that Evanston's economy is weighted toward essential services and institutional employment rather than technology or professional services clusters.

The structural implication is troubling: Evanston's dominant layoff risk comes from sectors that provide limited wage growth, volatile employment tenure, and restricted career advancement. Workers displaced from food service and security roles face longer reemployment durations and often must accept positions at equivalent or lower wage levels. Unlike displaced manufacturing workers or technology professionals who can sometimes command premium wages through reskilling, displaced food service and security workers have fewer pathways to economic recovery.

Temporal Patterns: Clustering and Recent Escalation

Evanston's WARN notices cluster unevenly across the five-year tracking window. Three notices were filed in 2020—a year marked by pandemic-related disruptions affecting hospitality and food service operations nationwide. Two notices appeared in 2024, and one in 2025, suggesting a resurgence of layoff activity after a relatively quiet 2021-2023 period.

The 2020 clustering almost certainly reflects pandemic-related workforce reductions. Food service operations at universities, corporate campuses, and healthcare facilities faced dramatic demand destruction as campuses closed, remote work expanded, and healthcare systems restructured. The Compass Group notices almost certainly relate to this period's institutional disruptions.

The recent uptick in 2024 and 2025, however, suggests that Evanston is entering a new phase of workforce volatility. Unlike the pandemic-specific shock of 2020, these recent notices may reflect structural shifts in institutional food service models, ongoing security sector consolidation, or broader economic pressures affecting the local employment base.

Local Economic Impact: Beyond the Headline Numbers

The 682 workers affected by WARN notices represent individual households facing income disruption, benefit loss, and reemployment stress. In Evanston's relatively tight housing market, where median rents and home prices reflect proximity to Northwestern University and the Chicago metropolitan area, job loss carries immediate consequences for housing stability.

Food service and security workers typically earn $28,000 to $38,000 annually—wages sufficient for independent living in many areas but constrained in Evanston's high-cost housing environment. A worker displaced from a Compass Group food service position or Allied Universal security role faces potential housing instability during the 6 to 12-month reemployment period that displaced food service workers typically experience.

Beyond individual household impacts, large layoffs affect municipal tax bases, consumer spending at local retail establishments, and demand for public services. Evanston's property tax base depends substantially on residential property values and commercial activity. When 682 workers lose employment within a 12 to 24-month window, local retail spending declines, municipal revenues contract, and demand for social services increases.

The concentration among institutional employers—particularly Compass Group's operations at universities and healthcare facilities—means that layoffs often precede or accompany institutional restructuring. When Northwestern University or Ascension healthcare system shifts food service models or security arrangements, Evanston's economy absorbs the shock directly.

Regional Context: Evanston Within Broader Illinois Trends

Evanston's layoff patterns reflect larger Illinois economic currents. The state has experienced significant manufacturing employment loss over multiple decades, with food service and hospitality becoming increasingly important components of regional employment. Evanston, as a university town and professional services center, faces different pressures than industrial regions downstate.

However, Evanston's heavy concentration of food service and security layoffs mirrors a national trend: institutional service work has become economically fragile. Cost pressures on universities, healthcare systems, and corporate campuses drive consolidation of food service operations and outsourcing of security functions to lowest-cost providers, creating employment volatility that buffets workers and communities.

The company-level concentration—with Compass Group dominating Evanston's layoff data—reflects national consolidation trends in food service contracting. Large multinational firms capture institutional contracts through aggressive bidding, then deploy labor reduction strategies to improve margins. When these companies face contract losses or model transitions, entire local workforces absorb the impact simultaneously.

Evanston's position within the Chicago metropolitan area may provide some reemployment advantage over more isolated communities. Access to broader job markets, public transit connections, and educational resources offer displaced workers more options than they would face in smaller cities. However, the gap between food service wages in Evanston and surrounding areas remains modest, limiting geographic mobility as a reemployment strategy.

The concentration of layoffs within essential service sectors, the dominance of a single employer across multiple notices, and the recent acceleration of layoff activity all indicate that Evanston faces ongoing employment volatility in the sectors that support its service-dependent economy. Without significant economic diversification or sector-specific workforce development initiatives, the city will likely continue absorbing periodic shocks from food service and security sector restructuring.