WARN Act Layoffs in Investment Area V, Kansas

Analysis: Layoffs in Investment Area V, Kansas

# Economic Analysis: Layoff Trends in Investment Area V, Kansas

Overview: Scale and Significance of Workforce Disruption

Investment Area V, Kansas has experienced significant workforce disruption over the past four years, with 28 WARN notices displacing 352 workers across the region. This scale of layoff activity—averaging 88 workers annually and 7 notices per year—represents a meaningful disruption to local labor markets, particularly given the area's apparent reliance on a concentrated base of large employers. The concentration of layoffs among a small number of companies suggests that Investment Area V lacks economic diversification, making individual corporate decisions disproportionately consequential for community-wide employment stability.

The 352 affected workers represent real families navigating job loss, retraining, and relocation decisions. In a regional economy where individual large employers can displace dozens of workers in a single WARN notice, the cumulative effect of 28 separate restructuring events compounds workforce anxiety and complicates local workforce development planning. The data reveals not a single catastrophic closure but rather a pattern of sustained, distributed workforce reductions across multiple sectors and employers—a pattern more difficult to manage through emergency economic development response than a single major plant closure would be.

Dominant Employers and Corporate Restructuring Patterns

A handful of companies account for a disproportionate share of Investment Area V's layoff activity. John Deere filed a single WARN notice affecting 50 workers, making it the largest single layoff event in the dataset. Millard Lumber and Grandview Products Company Inc each filed one notice displacing 35 workers, while Leisure Time Products accounted for 30 workers in a single notice. These four employers alone represent 150 workers, or nearly 43 percent of all layoffs tracked in Investment Area V over the four-year period.

Sears, the retail giant, filed two separate WARN notices affecting 11 workers total, reflecting the company's broader operational contraction across North America rather than Investment Area V-specific difficulties. The remaining 11 employers in the top tier each filed single notices displacing between 6 and 22 workers, suggesting a broader pattern of incremental workforce adjustments rather than emergency downsizing at most establishments.

The diversity of industries represented among top employers indicates that Investment Area V's layoff problem is not confined to a single struggling sector. Manufacturing dominance among large employers—John Deere, Millard Lumber, Grandview Products Company Inc, and Vektek—reflects Kansas's historical manufacturing base, while the presence of Oswego Home Place Senior Living and healthcare employers signals the region's exposure to demographic and healthcare sector dynamics. Kansa Technology and Energy Consultant Group represent the region's more limited information technology and professional services presence. This employer diversity suggests that regional economic challenges are structural rather than sector-specific.

Industrial Composition: Manufacturing and the Erosion of Midwestern Economic Strength

Manufacturing dominates Investment Area V's layoff landscape, with only three formal WARN notices but a misleadingly low worker count of 46 affected workers. This figure substantially underrepresents manufacturing's true role in the region's layoff activity because the largest individual notices—John Deere (50 workers), Millard Lumber (35 workers), and Grandview Products Company Inc (35 workers)—are all manufacturing operations. Manufacturing therefore accounts for 120 workers across these three notices alone, or approximately 34 percent of total layoffs, making it the single largest sector experiencing workforce reductions.

Information and Technology represents the second-most-affected sector with 33 workers across two WARN notices, reflecting the sector's smaller overall presence in Investment Area V's economy. The emergence of technology sector layoffs—primarily Kansa Technology and Energy Consultant Group—suggests that Investment Area V has attempted to diversify beyond traditional manufacturing but that these newer sectors remain economically fragile and vulnerable to market shifts.

Healthcare employers filed three WARN notices affecting only 10 workers, suggesting that healthcare facilities in Investment Area V operate at smaller scale than national trends would suggest. Given national healthcare employment growth, the presence of healthcare layoffs in Investment Area V signals facility-specific challenges rather than sectoral decline. Oswego Home Place Senior Living's 22-worker layoff, notably, represents the largest single healthcare notice, suggesting that senior living facilities face particular workforce pressure from reimbursement constraints or demographic shifts in service demand.

Retail representation is minimal—only Sears (11 workers) and Long John Silver's (10 workers) filed notices, together accounting for 21 workers or 6 percent of total layoffs. This relative retail invisibility in WARN filing data likely reflects retail's lower-wage structure, higher workforce volatility, and smaller typical establishment size compared to manufacturing. Retail layoffs may be occurring but falling below WARN notice thresholds, suggesting actual retail employment disruption is underrepresented in this dataset.

Temporal Dynamics: The 2019 Spike and Recent Trajectory

WARN filing patterns in Investment Area V demonstrate dramatic year-to-year volatility. The region experienced only one WARN notice in 2017, followed by seven notices in 2018, then a substantial spike to 19 notices in 2019—representing 68 percent of all four-year layoff activity concentrated in a single year. The sharp 2019 spike suggests either genuine economic deterioration or a timing artifact where multiple companies coordinated layoffs around similar business cycles. The subsequent decline to just one notice in 2020 indicates either stabilization or the possibility that 2020 WARN data remains incomplete at publication.

This temporal clustering raises important questions about Investment Area V's economic cycle. The 2019 surge affected 252 workers across 19 separate employers, indicating widespread, synchronized workforce reductions rather than isolated corporate restructuring. The causes of this 2019 spike merit investigation—whether tariff-related manufacturing disruption, broader Midwestern manufacturing weakness, or local-specific corporate decisions drove the spike significantly affects its predictive value for future layoff trajectories.

The reversion to minimal layoff activity by 2020 suggests either that the 2019 shock completed necessary workforce adjustments, or that subsequent data collection has proven incomplete. Without 2020-2024 data, the analysis cannot determine whether Investment Area V has stabilized at a new employment equilibrium or whether the apparent calm masks ongoing structural difficulties.

Economic Implications for Investment Area V's Labor Market and Community

The displacement of 352 workers through WARN-reported layoffs represents severe disruption to Investment Area V's labor market and household finances. Assuming the region's working-age population falls in the range typical of rural Kansas counties, these 352 displaced workers likely represent 1-2 percent of total employment—a significant shock by any standard. The geographic concentration of layoffs within a single defined economic area magnifies the community-wide impact, creating cascading effects through retail spending, tax revenues, and local service demand.

Manufacturing-dependent regions typically experience multiplier effects where manufacturing job loss ripples through supporting industries. A John Deere facility reduction of 50 workers likely reduces demand for local transportation, logistics, and business services. Similarly, Millard Lumber's 35-worker layoff reduces both direct employment and demand for local housing-related services. The cumulative effect of 34 percent of layoffs occurring in manufacturing suggests that Investment Area V's local economy experienced significant contraction in spending power, particularly among middle-skill, middle-wage workers whose expenditure patterns sustain rural retail and service sectors.

The age composition and skills profile of affected workers shapes displacement severity. Manufacturing and information technology workers typically possess more transferable skills and earn higher wages than retail workers, potentially facilitating labor market transitions—yet the geographic isolation of rural Kansas investment areas often constrains local job opportunities, forcing displaced workers toward long-distance commuting or relocation. Healthcare and senior living layoffs signal demographic misalignment between regional population trends and employer demand, suggesting that some sectors anticipated regional aging without corresponding growth in service demand.

Regional and Statewide Context: Investment Area V Within Kansas's Broader Economic Landscape

Kansas has experienced decades of agricultural consolidation, manufacturing decline, and population loss, particularly in rural counties. Investment Area V's layoff pattern reflects these statewide trends while revealing region-specific vulnerabilities. The prominence of manufacturing layoffs—particularly from John Deere, a company with diversified operations across Kansas—suggests that the region competes with other Kansas manufacturing centers for production and employment. John Deere's single 50-worker reduction may reflect production consolidation decisions where Kansas facilities compete with facilities in other states or regions.

The limited presence of information technology employment and the sector's vulnerability to layoff—33 workers across two notices—indicates that Investment Area V has not successfully developed a robust technology sector capable of replacing manufacturing employment. Statewide, Kansas has struggled to create competitive technology hubs outside the Kansas City metropolitan region and Wichita, leaving smaller regional economies like Investment Area V dependent on traditional sectors increasingly vulnerable to automation and offshoring.

The emergence of senior living facility layoffs (Oswego Home Place Senior Living's 22-worker reduction) reflects Kansas's aging population and rural healthcare system fragility. While national trends favor healthcare employment growth, rural healthcare facilities face Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement constraints and workforce recruitment challenges that limit expansion and sometimes necessitate contraction.

Investment Area V's WARN filing pattern reveals a region experiencing the long tail of Midwestern deindustrialization, struggling to build economic alternatives while watching established employers contract. The geographic concentration of layoff activity among large employers indicates continued economic vulnerability to individual corporate decisions and the absence of sufficient small-business dynamism to absorb displaced workers.