WARN Act Layoffs in Garden City, Kansas

Analysis: Layoffs in Garden City, Kansas

# Economic Analysis of Layoffs in Garden City, Kansas

Overview: Scale and Significance of Workforce Reductions

Garden City, Kansas has experienced 183 documented worker separations across eight WARN Act notices since 2014, marking a modest but meaningful disruption to the community's employment landscape. While this figure may appear modest compared to larger metropolitan areas, the context of Garden City's population of approximately 27,000 renders these layoffs economically significant. The 183 affected workers represent roughly 1.4 percent of the city's total workforce, assuming a labor force participation rate consistent with Kansas state averages. This concentration of job loss, though spread across a decade, signals recurring structural challenges in sectors critical to Garden City's economic foundation.

The distribution of these WARN notices reveals an uneven pattern of workforce adjustment. Two notices affected zero workers while generating formal notifications, suggesting either clerical errors in filing, position reclassifications, or facility closures without immediate staffing impact. The remaining six notices account for 183 confirmed separations, indicating that when Garden City employers do reduce workforces, the reductions tend toward meaningful scale. This bimodal distribution—either zero or substantial impact—differs from patterns in economically diverse regions where layoffs distribute more evenly across multiple employers.

Dominance of Manufacturing and Specialized Services

Worthington Industries stands as the unequivocal driver of layoff activity in Garden City, filing two separate WARN notices that collectively impacted 148 workers. This single company accounts for 80.9 percent of all documented layoffs in the city over the past decade. As a major employer in the metals manufacturing and processing sector, Worthington's workforce reductions carry outsized weight in a community where manufacturing remains economically central. The company's two notices span different time periods—one in the 2022 cluster and one in the 2025 surge—suggesting either cyclical production adjustments or cumulative structural challenges in metal fabrication markets.

The healthcare sector appears as an unexpected secondary driver of layoffs through St. Rose Ambulatory and Surgery Center, which filed one notice affecting 35 workers in 2025. This single healthcare layoff represents 19.1 percent of total documented separations, underscoring how concentrated the impact becomes when analyzing a small city's layoff activity. The timing of this notice coincides with the 2025 uptick in WARN filings, suggesting possible sector-wide pressures or facility restructuring in regional healthcare delivery.

The remaining five WARN notices filed by American Implement, Westlake Hardware, Jimmy John's, and Dales Furniture each reported zero affected workers despite formal filing requirements, creating an analytical puzzle. These notices may reflect planned consolidations, reorganizations, or changes in operational structure that satisfied WARN Act triggering thresholds without immediate mass separations. Alternatively, they may represent temporary layoffs subsequently reversed or positions eliminated through attrition rather than explicit reductions. This distinction matters because it suggests Garden City's actual employment volatility may exceed what raw separation numbers indicate.

Industry Composition and Structural Forces

The data presents a counterintuitive industrial profile. Only one WARN notice explicitly lists manufacturing as the primary industry, yet this notice reported zero affected workers. Meanwhile, Worthington Industries, a manufacturing-focused employer, filed two notices affecting 148 workers without manufacturing appearing as the categorized industry. This discrepancy likely reflects how employers classify their primary business operations versus specific facility functions or how the WARN Act database categorizes diversified operations.

Garden City's economy remains anchored in meat processing, agricultural equipment manufacturing, and agricultural services—sectors not prominently reflected in recent WARN filings. The absence of major meat-packing facility WARN notices is notable, as this industry typically constitutes the largest employment sector in southwestern Kansas. This gap may indicate relative stability in meat processing employment during this period, or it may reflect lower documentation rates for facilities operating under different regulatory frameworks.

The diversity of affected employers—ranging from manufacturing to retail to healthcare to quick-service food—suggests no single industry is bearing disproportionate strain. Rather, the pattern indicates Garden City's economy faces diffuse workforce adjustment pressures across multiple sectors simultaneously. The involvement of Jimmy John's, a fast-casual restaurant chain, in WARN filings points toward restructuring in retail and food service, sectors characterized by high turnover but typically less likely to trigger WARN Act filings unless entire locations close.

Historical Trends: Cyclical Volatility and Recent Acceleration

The temporal distribution of WARN notices reveals pronounced clustering. The decade from 2014 to 2025 saw only one notice filed in 2014, followed by two in 2015. A five-year gap ensued with no documented notices, suggesting either relative labor market stability or incomplete data capture. Then in 2022, activity surged with three notices, and 2025 continued with two additional notices. This pattern suggests a shift from relative quiescence to increased workforce volatility beginning in 2022.

The 2022-2025 period accounts for five of eight total WARN notices (62.5 percent), concentrated in the most recent four-year span. This acceleration warrants attention to macroeconomic conditions and sector-specific disruptions occurring during this interval. The 2022 period coincided with post-pandemic labor market reorganization, supply chain disruptions affecting manufacturing, and inflation-driven cost pressures across multiple industries. The 2025 notices may reflect continued fallout from these structural adjustments or new pressures emerging from shifting economic conditions.

Worker impact correlates imperfectly with notice frequency. The two notices filed in 2015 affected an undisclosed number of workers (likely small given historical context), while the three 2022 notices appear concentrated in the Worthington Industries separation. The 2025 pair of notices accounts for approximately 183 total separations, suggesting recent layoffs impact substantially larger worker cohorts than earlier reductions.

Economic Impact on the Local Labor Market

The loss of 183 jobs in Garden City creates measurable disruption to household income, tax revenues, and economic momentum. Applied across the city's estimated labor force, these separations remove roughly 1.4 percent of total employment. For affected workers and their families, this represents income loss measured in millions of dollars annually. A manufacturing or healthcare worker earning $35,000 to $45,000 annually—typical for these sectors in Kansas—loses between $6.4 million and $8.2 million in collective household income when accounting for the full 183-worker cohort.

The local multiplier effect amplifies this direct impact. Every dollar lost in local wages typically generates $0.60 to $0.80 in secondary spending reductions throughout the community as displaced workers curtail consumption at local retailers, restaurants, and service providers. Municipal tax receipts from sales tax—a critical revenue source for Kansas cities—face pressure as reduced consumer spending lowers transaction volumes. Property values near affected employers may face pressure if workforce reductions signal broader business challenges.

For a city of 27,000, the concentration of 148 job losses in a single employer (Worthington Industries) creates singular vulnerability. Over-reliance on any single large employer concentrates economic risk and constrains the city's ability to absorb workforce disruptions. Diversification efforts become economically essential when one company can unilaterally create 5.5 percent unemployment shocks through operational adjustments.

The timing of layoffs relative to job creation determines net employment impact. If Garden City's economy is generating net job growth through business expansion and new firm formation, these layoffs may reflect sector rotation rather than absolute decline. However, WARN data captures gross job losses without capturing offsetting gains, creating an incomplete picture of net labor market change.

Regional Context and Kansas Comparisons

Southwestern Kansas has historically relied on agricultural processing, equipment manufacturing, and natural resource extraction—exactly the sectors appearing in Garden City's WARN notices. Worthington Industries' substantial workforce reductions align with national trends in metal fabrication, where automation, import competition, and shifting manufacturing investment patterns have compressed employment across the heartland.

Garden City's layoff intensity—measured as separations per capita—appears consistent with small-city labor markets experiencing selective sectoral pressure rather than broad-based contraction. Larger Kansas cities like Wichita or Kansas City metro areas typically experience higher absolute layoff volumes but lower per-capita impact due to economic diversification. Garden City's narrower economic base means individual employer decisions generate outsized community impact.

The healthcare sector layoff represented by St. Rose Ambulatory and Surgery Center reflects national consolidation trends in healthcare delivery, where facility restructuring and service centralization eliminate positions despite stable or growing overall sector employment. This pattern increasingly characterizes rural healthcare employment, where competition, regulatory pressures, and shift toward centralized facilities reduce rural healthcare workforce demand.

The apparent stability in meat processing employment—southwestern Kansas's largest private employer sector—deserves scrutiny. If meat-packing facilities are maintaining payrolls while other sectors shed workers, this concentration creates economic fragility. Conversely, if meat processing has already shed workers through previous workforce adjustments or attrition not captured in WARN filings, the low recent notice activity may mask continued sector contraction.

The 2022-2025 acceleration in WARN notices positions Garden City within broader Kansas economic trends characterized by post-pandemic adjustment, manufacturing sector consolidation, and rural economic diversification challenges. Understanding whether this acceleration represents a temporary spike or a sustained shift toward higher workforce volatility requires continued monitoring of emerging WARN notices and complementary labor market data.