WARN Act Layoffs in Maryland

In-Depth Analysis: Layoffs in Maryland

# Maryland's Layoff Crisis: A Comprehensive Economic Analysis

Executive Summary

Maryland has experienced a profound and accelerating labor market disruption over the past five years. With 2,160 total WARN notices affecting 191,154 workers since 2000, the state's layoff trajectory reveals a landscape fundamentally reshaped by sectoral decline, corporate consolidation, and economic shock. The data tells a stark story: 2020 alone generated 416 notices displacing 30,276 workers—a single-year impact representing 16% of all notices and 16% of all affected workers across the entire 25-year dataset. Yet rather than marking a temporary pandemic-driven anomaly, 2020 appears to have set a new baseline. The years 2022 through 2025 averaged 127.75 notices annually, compared to a pre-pandemic average of 47.9 notices per year from 2000 to 2019. This 167% increase in notice frequency, coupled with 2025's exceptional 255 notices affecting 12,981 workers—the highest volume outside of 2020—suggests Maryland is entering a sustained period of workforce contraction that shows no signs of abating.

The aggregate impact extends beyond raw numbers. An average WARN notice in Maryland displaces 88.5 workers, but the median is substantially lower, indicating that while most layoffs affect smaller cohorts, a handful of mass terminations drive the state's overall disruption. The composition of these layoffs matters equally: approximately 36% represent outright closures, 36% are traditional layoffs, and 27% remain categorized as unknown, suggesting hidden or delayed structural adjustments that have yet to crystallize in official filings.

Industry Analysis: Retail Collapse and Service Sector Volatility

The sectoral composition of Maryland's layoffs reveals an economy in transition, with certain industries bearing disproportionate adjustment costs. Accommodation and Food Services dominate the dataset, accounting for 120 notices and displacing 14,358 workers—7.5% of all affected workers despite representing just one sector. This concentration reflects both the industry's fragmentation (many small employers filing separate notices) and genuine structural distress. Within this category, Outback Steakhouse and Bonefish Grill (both operating under OS Restaurant, LLC) have filed 27 notices collectively displacing 2,016 workers. The casual dining segment, which thrived in the 1990s and 2000s, has faced relentless pressure from changing consumer preferences, the rise of delivery platforms fragmenting customer loyalty, and wage inflation in a labor-intensive business model. The pandemic accelerated pre-existing vulnerabilities, but these companies' continued presence in the 2024-2025 data indicates ongoing structural erosion rather than temporary disruption.

Retail Trade presents an even starker picture of sectoral decline. Eleven major retailers populate Maryland's top employer list, collectively filing 113 notices and displacing 6,615 workers. The list reads as an autopsy of American retail: Montgomery Ward (15 notices, 2,530 workers), Kmart (13 notices, 1,326 workers), Ames (8 notices, 603 workers), Macy's (8 notices, 619 workers), Shoppers Food & Pharmacy (12 notices, 702 workers), and New York & Company (10 notices, 172 workers). These are not merely store closures in isolated markets; they represent the systematic contraction of legacy retail formats that cannot compete with e-commerce and big-box consolidation. Yet this narrative requires nuance. While Amazon appears in the top 25 with 8 notices and 1,095 workers, its presence reflects fulfillment center disruptions and logistics restructuring rather than the existential crisis facing traditional retailers. The retail sector broadly generated only 61 notices across 25 years, but those notices concentrated in the 2000-2012 period, indicating that the acute phase of retail restructuring predates the recent acceleration—what we observe now in other sectors may represent the delayed diffusion of competitive pressures previously confined to retail.

Transportation and Warehousing emerges as an unexpected high-impact sector, generating 34 notices affecting 6,480 workers. This represents the largest per-notice employment disruption outside of government and education, with an average displacement of 190.6 workers per notice. While e-commerce has created substantial logistics employment, the sector is simultaneously experiencing technological disruption through automation of sorting facilities, autonomous vehicle development, and supply chain optimization. Manufacturing contributes 46 notices affecting 3,832 workers, with primary concentration in chemicals, machinery, and precision manufacturing—sectors historically central to Maryland's economy. The average manufacturing WARN notice displaces 83.3 workers, suggesting mid-sized production facilities rather than massive plant closures, which signals gradual contraction rather than catastrophic restructuring.

The presence of Government (4 notices, 114 workers) and substantial Education sector disruptions (17 notices, 2,014 workers) reveals fiscal stress rippling through public institutions. Department of Health and Human Services alone filed 10 notices affecting 2,595 workers, likely reflecting federal contracting consolidation or agency restructuring. These disruptions carry multiplier effects beyond direct job loss, as public sector reductions constrain regional purchasing power in ways private sector layoffs do not.

Geographic Concentration: The Baltimore-DC Corridor's Vulnerability

Layoffs in Maryland demonstrate extreme geographic concentration along the I-95 corridor, with Baltimore and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area (which includes Rockville, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Columbia, and Silver Spring) accounting for the overwhelming majority of displaced workers. Baltimore alone generated 163 notices affecting 15,378 workers—8% of all notices and 8% of all affected workers. Baltimore City separately recorded 28 notices affecting 5,447 workers, creating an effective metropolitan total exceeding 20,000 workers displaced in a region with approximately 2.7 million residents.

The Washington suburbs demonstrate comparable disruption intensity. Columbia generated 67 notices affecting 4,482 workers; Rockville produced 57 notices affecting 5,563 workers; Bethesda recorded 46 notices affecting 4,574 workers. These three jurisdictions alone account for 170 notices and 14,619 workers—8% of all notices and 7.6% of all affected workers. The concentration reflects these areas' role as regional corporate headquarters and government contracting hubs, but also their vulnerability to sector-specific shocks. Rockville and Bethesda host substantial pharmaceutical and biotechnology operations; disruptions here cascade through specialized labor markets with limited alternative employment opportunities.

Smaller regional centers exhibit lower absolute volumes but higher per-capita impact. Frederick, Gaithersburg, Hagerstown, and Laurel collectively generated 181 notices affecting 10,348 workers. These secondary cities depend heavily on manufacturing, logistics, and government contracting—precisely the sectors experiencing the most sustained disruption. When a major employer exits Frederick or Hagerstown, the local economy lacks diversified alternatives that larger metropolitan areas provide.

The geographic data also reveals stark absences: large portions of rural Maryland appear underrepresented in WARN filings. This likely reflects not labor market stability but rather economic structure—rural Maryland contains fewer employers large enough to trigger WARN thresholds, and when displacement occurs among smaller firms, it operates outside formal notification systems. The visible crisis thus understates total displacement in less urbanized regions.

Major Employers: Systemic Disruption Among Household Names

The top employer analysis illuminates which companies are driving workforce contraction and suggests the underlying economic forces at work. A&P/Super Fresh, a grocery chain, leads all employers with 21 notices affecting 1,354 workers. Grocery retail faces simultaneous pressures: wage inflation amid tight labor markets, competition from Amazon Fresh and delivery platforms, and consolidation among regional operators. A&P filed notices spanning 2000 to 2012, indicating the company's gradual exit from the Maryland market rather than sudden collapse.

Montgomery Ward presents a remarkable case: 15 notices affecting 2,530 workers across the 2000-2003 period represent the company's chapter 11 bankruptcy and liquidation. This represents a single company undergoing systemic dissolution, yet generating notices across multiple jurisdictions and time periods—illustrating how formal WARN compliance fragments mass layoffs into legally-required incremental filings.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America (16 and 10 notices respectively, affecting 401 and 457 workers) reflect financial services consolidation and back-office automation. The 2008 financial crisis triggered substantial banking sector restructuring that extended throughout the 2010s, with regulatory pressure and technological advancement systematically reducing employment among administrative and operations staff. Notably, these are not small regional banks but national-scale operations, suggesting automation and centralization rather than market-driven contraction.

Outback Steakhouse and Bonefish Grill illustrate concentrated employment disruption in single corporate structures. The 27 notices across these brands (1,582 and 434 workers respectively) suggest systematic underperformance and gradual store closures across Maryland's market. Operating under common ownership, the notices likely reflect corporate strategic decisions to rationalize underperforming units.

Lockheed Martin (14 notices, 579 workers) and Charles River Laboratories (9 notices, 180 workers) represent defense and life sciences sectors—Maryland's most economically significant industries beyond government. These notices span multiple years and appear to reflect periodic workforce adjustments rather than existential threats, yet their presence among top employers indicates that even Maryland's most strategically important private sectors experience substantial churning.

Marriott International (10 notices, 1,257 workers) and Sodexo (15 notices, 537 workers) operate in hospitality and food services, sectors with structural employment challenges. Marriott notices concentrate in 2020-2021, correlating directly with pandemic travel collapse, but their persistence in subsequent years suggests permanent reductions rather than temporary furloughs.

Amazon (8 notices, 1,095 workers) represents only a modest share of displacement by company rank, yet commands significance as a potential bellwether. Amazon's notices span 2018-2024 with no clear pattern, suggesting ongoing operations optimization and fulfillment network restructuring rather than strategic withdrawal from Maryland.

The employer list's composition—dominated by legacy retail, consolidated restaurant operations, and mature financial institutions—reveals an economy where established firms are contracting while growth sectors remain modest employers. This reflects a transition economy struggling to reallocate workers from declining to expanding sectors.

Historical Trends: From Baseline Disruption to Sustained Crisis

Maryland's layoff trajectory divides into three distinct phases. From 2000 to 2019, the state averaged 47.9 notices annually affecting 5,471 workers per year. This baseline period encompassed the 2000-2001 recession (76 and 73 notices respectively) and the 2008-2009 financial crisis (43 and 74 notices respectively), yet produced remarkably consistent annual averages. The period suggests a labor market with baseline churn driven by ordinary sectoral adjustment and normal business cycles.

The second phase—2020 alone—represents a singular exogenous shock: 416 notices affecting 30,276 workers, or 29% above the previous annual peak. This explosion corresponds precisely with pandemic lockdowns and reflects genuine emergency-driven employment destruction.

The third phase, 2021-2025, is the most analytically important. After 2020's collapse, 2021 declined to 53 notices (2,953 workers), suggesting potential recovery. Yet 2022-2024 averaged 118.7 notices annually, and 2025 reached 255 notices—exceeding even 2020's rate of dislocation. This trajectory contradicts the pandemic-as-temporary-shock narrative. Rather, it suggests the pandemic served as an accelerant for structural adjustment already underway, and post-pandemic layoffs represent a "new normal" operating at elevated intensity.

The year-by-year data reveals additional patterns. The 2001-2003 period (76, 73, and 66 notices) exceeded pre-2008 baseline averages, possibly reflecting 9/11-driven economic disruption and aerospace sector contraction. The 2011-2012 period (88 and 46 notices) likely reflects continued financial crisis aftermath. The 2019 spike to 83 notices appears disconnected from major economic events, suggesting sectoral weakness preceding the pandemic. Critically, 2026 shows only 26 notices from early-year filings, a projection base rate insufficient for trend inference, but if annualized would produce approximately 156 notices—continuing the elevated post-pandemic pattern.

Maryland's Economic Foundations and Structural Vulnerabilities

Understanding Maryland's layoff crisis requires situating it within the state's distinctive economic structure. Maryland is quintessentially a government, healthcare, and advanced services economy. The Baltimore-Washington corridor hosts the National Institutes of Health, federal contracting clusters, defense establishments, and a substantial healthcare-research complex. This structure provides relative employment stability compared to manufacturing-dependent states, yet creates specific vulnerabilities.

Federal contracting consolidation and budget uncertainty generate periodic shocks in the government-adjacent sectors that employ substantial populations in the DC suburbs. The Healthcare sector's 46 notices affecting 2,274 workers likely reflects both consolidation (large hospital systems absorbing smaller providers) and post-pandemic staffing normalization as telehealth and elective procedure backlogs resolved. Finance and Insurance (32 notices, 1,606 workers) represents not primarily Maryland's banking sector but rather regional headquarters operations for national institutions subject to technological disruption and consolidation.

Maryland's manufacturing base, concentrated in Transportation Equipment, Chemicals, and Pharmaceuticals, demonstrates resilience in absolute employment terms but experienced periodic major displacements. The Lockheed Martin presence reflects aerospace-defense concentration in Hunt Valley and Bethesda; disruptions there are recoverable only if federal defense spending maintains Maryland's market share. The presence of Charles River Laboratories suggests life sciences contract research, a sector vulnerable to pharmaceutical industry consolidation and outsourcing to lower-cost jurisdictions.

The state's relative prosperity—median household income ranks in the top ten nationally—masks sectoral distress. High-income earners in government and advanced services obscure manufacturing and retail worker displacement. The geographic concentration of wealth in the Baltimore-Washington corridor means that layoffs affecting secondary cities carry far greater relative economic impact.

Outlook: Structural Adjustment and Policy Imperatives

The 2025 spike to 255 notices and 2024's sustained 122 notices suggest Maryland is entering a period of ongoing, elevated workforce dislocation that cannot be dismissed as pandemic-related or cyclical. Several forces appear durable: retail automation and consolidation will continue pressuring remaining traditional retailers; restaurant sector overcapacity and wage pressure will sustain accommodation and food services disruption; financial services back-office automation will persist; and supply chain optimization will continue reshaping transportation and warehousing employment.

The closure-versus-layoff distinction matters for workforce planning. With 650 notices (30% of total) classified as closures, substantial groups of workers face permanent displacement from their employers rather than potential recall. These workers require not retraining support but genuine occupational transition assistance—a far more intensive and expensive intervention than temporary layoff benefits.

The skills mismatch is severe. Retail, accommodation, and food services workers typically possess lower educational attainment and sector-specific skills with limited transferability to growing sectors like advanced manufacturing, IT services, or healthcare research. Maryland's labor market lacks the robust apprenticeship infrastructure or subsidized training programs necessary to systematically retrain displaced retail workers for cybersecurity or laboratory technician positions.

The geographic dimension compounds the challenge. Baltimore and secondary cities like Frederick and Hagerstown experienced concentrated layoffs yet lack the diversified economic base that would support absorbing displaced workers into alternative employment. Baltimore's 15,378 displaced workers exist in a metropolitan area with only 650,000 jobs—a 2.4% employment shock—concentrated among lower-wage service occupations where new job creation is limited.

Federal policy levers remain available but underutilized. WARN Act compliance itself provides minimal intervention—the law mandates notification, not support. State-level Trade Adjustment Assistance, incumbent worker training programs, and sectoral employment initiatives receive marginal funding relative to the scale of disruption. Maryland's 90-day notice requirement theoretically provides time for worker adjustment, yet without proactive retraining referral and income support systems, WARN compliance alone accomplishes little beyond documented displacement.

The trajectory forward suggests that rather than representing a temporary crisis requiring emergency response, Maryland's layoff acceleration represents a sustained structural adjustment to an economy where retail employment is obsolete, traditional restaurant formats are overcapitalized, and manufacturing employment requires far fewer workers per unit of output. The state's policy apparatus must shift from crisis management to managing ongoing sectoral decline while supporting worker transition. The alternative is persistent economic bifurcation in which government and advanced services workers in the Baltimore-Washington corridor enjoy continued prosperity while manufacturing and service workers in secondary cities experience permanent displacement and stagnant wages—a pattern the data increasingly suggests is already materializing.