Tracking mass layoff and plant closure notices filed under the WARN Act in Ohio, updated daily. Explore the interactive data →
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# Economic Analysis of Layoffs in Ohio
Ohio has filed 3,852 WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notices affecting 518,338 workers since 1996, establishing itself as one of the nation's layoff hotspots. The data reveals a state economy in profound structural transition, marked by episodic shocks rather than steady erosion. The 2020 pandemic year stands as an outlier catastrophe, with 507 notices displacing 55,603 workers—nearly 11 percent of the entire 28-year total compressed into twelve months. Yet the crisis extends beyond pandemic disruption. Annual filings have remained elevated in subsequent years, averaging 132 notices annually from 2021 through 2025, suggesting that Ohio is not simply recovering from a temporary shock but rather navigating a persistent recalibration of its economic base.
The current trajectory remains concerning. The five-year average (2020-2024) of 181.6 notices annually nearly tripled the pre-pandemic five-year average of 62.8 notices, indicating structural damage rather than cyclical adjustment. While 2026 data remains incomplete, the momentum through early 2025 suggests Ohio continues facing significant workforce displacement pressures. For context, the state's 518,338 affected workers represent roughly 10 percent of Ohio's total employment base, a concentration that demands serious attention from state policymakers and regional economic development actors.
Manufacturing emerges as the primary driver of Ohio's layoff crisis, accounting for 311 notices and displacing 55,363 workers—more than one-tenth of all affected workers and 8 percent of all notices filed. This concentration reflects Ohio's historical identity as a manufacturing powerhouse and its vulnerability to the forces reshaping American industrial production. The prominence of General Motors (9 notices, 5,643 workers), ArcelorMittal (6 notices, 1,611 workers), Eaton Corporation (8 notices, 937 workers), Lear Corporation (6 notices, 989 workers), and Parker Hannifin Corp (8 notices, 61 workers) underscores that Ohio's manufacturing layoffs are not concentrated among small, struggling operations but rather concentrated among flagship industrial corporations.
These patterns signal multiple converging pressures rather than a single cause. Automation has accelerated throughout the period, particularly in automotive production, where robotics and advanced manufacturing processes require fewer workers while increasing output. The shift toward electric vehicle production has disrupted traditional automotive supply chains, advantaging producers with existing EV capacity while penalizing legacy suppliers focused on internal combustion engines. Simultaneously, competitive pressures from lower-cost manufacturing regions globally have persisted, and tariff policies have created supply chain uncertainty. ArcelorMittal's presence in the data reflects broader steel industry challenges, including competition from overseas producers and the ongoing structural contraction of domestic steel demand relative to the industry's capacity.
Healthcare represents the second-largest layoff sector with 171 notices affecting 26,131 workers, offering a notable contrast to manufacturing. Here, consolidation and efficiency pressures drive workforce reductions rather than industry contraction. HealthSpan Partners (12 notices, 148 workers), Crothall Healthcare (8 notices, 627 workers), and Aramark (11 notices, 2,261 workers) dominate the healthcare layoffs, primarily reflecting hospital consolidations, adoption of electronic health records systems that reduced administrative roles, and the shift toward outpatient care reducing inpatient bed needs. The transportation sector (133 notices, 16,560 workers) and information & technology sector (113 notices, 13,374 workers) round out the top four, with transportation driven substantially by ABX Air, Inc. (26 notices, 4,647 workers), DHL Supply Chain (7 notices, 1,441 workers), and related logistics players responding to e-commerce-driven shifts in distribution networks.
Retail collapse features prominently through Kmart (22 notices, 1,449 workers) and related big-box retailers, reflecting the sector's 101 notices and 13,699 affected workers. This represents a structural industry contraction as consumers shifted online and surviving retailers consolidated operations. The participation of Big Bear (19 notices, 3,476 workers), a regional grocery chain, illustrates how even essential retail faces workforce reductions through technology adoption and consolidation.
Ohio's layoff burden distributes heavily across the state's largest metropolitan areas, with Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati dominating. Columbus alone accounted for 310 notices and 44,514 affected workers, clustering in the state's capital and largest metro area. Cleveland followed with 237 notices and 44,284 workers—notably, fewer notices than Columbus but nearly identical total displacement, indicating that Cleveland's layoffs tend toward larger facilities. Cincinnati registered 231 notices affecting 35,626 workers, creating a "big three" that absorbed 778 notices and 124,424 workers, or roughly 44 percent of all notices and 24 percent of all affected workers.
This concentration matters profoundly for local labor market dynamics. Columbus's economy, anchored by Nationwide Insurance, state government, and Ohio State University, provides some economic diversification cushioning the manufacturing and retail layoffs concentrated there. Cleveland's economy remains more dependent on legacy industrial base and healthcare, making the concentration of layoffs in that region more economically destabilizing. Cincinnati, while diversified, faces similar pressures. Beyond these metros, Toledo (94 notices, 24,368 workers) stands as a regional tragedy, where relatively few notices produced extraordinarily high displacement—indicating that Toledo absorbed major manufacturing or logistics facility closures that devastated the local labor market.
Warren (46 notices, 19,017 workers) and Wilmington (46 notices, 6,912 workers) display similar patterns of acute vulnerability. Warren, located in the Youngstown metropolitan area, reflects the region's ongoing struggles with legacy steelmaking capacity, while Wilmington's massive displacement relative to notice count suggests major facility closures. Youngstown itself (62 notices, 6,500 workers) continues the region's trauma, with the city's famous 1977 steel plant closure marking merely an early chapter in a decades-long industrial decline.
For regional policymakers, this geography matters. The concentration of layoffs in larger metros creates downward wage pressure across multiple sectors simultaneously, reducing workers' bargaining power and depressing recovery wages. The acute vulnerability of secondary cities like Toledo and Warren indicates that even Ohio's smaller labor markets face displacement shocks that dwarf the labor force available for retraining and reabsorption.
Beyond industry patterns, specific employers reveal the strategic forces reshaping Ohio's workforce. ABX Air, Inc., a Columbus-based cargo airline, filed 26 notices affecting 4,647 workers—the single largest notice filer. ABX Air's layoffs reflect the turbulent cargo logistics industry, where freight demand swings dramatically with macroeconomic cycles and where automation of sorting and handling processes displaces workers even during growth periods. The company's repeated notices suggest ongoing restructuring rather than a single catastrophic event.
Kmart's 22 notices affecting 1,449 workers represent the retail sector's death spiral. The company's store closure wave as Amazon and Walmart intensified competition created a cascading layoff pattern across multiple locations. What distinguishes Kmart in the data is that 22 separate notices likely reflect different store closures rather than a single headquarters reduction, illustrating how retail consolidation fragments across geography.
Big Bear, a regional grocery chain, filed 19 notices affecting 3,476 workers, suggesting major facility closures and store consolidations. The company's presence reflects the grocery industry's ongoing consolidation and the increasing market share of larger, more efficient chains. General Motors' 9 notices affecting 5,643 workers represent selective production cuts rather than facility closures, reflecting the company's strategic decisions to rationalize production across its Ohio footprint while maintaining some presence in the state.
Enterprise Holdings, HealthSpan Partners, and Aramark collectively illustrate how even profitable, growing sectors generate significant layoffs through efficiency improvements and consolidation. Aramark's 11 notices affecting 2,261 workers, spanning food service, healthcare, and facility management, likely reflect the company's ongoing automation of kitchen operations and shift toward central production facilities rather than decentralized kitchen staffing.
The data on company layoff patterns reveals a crucial insight: most notices stem from restructuring and optimization rather than industry failure. These companies continue operating; they operate with fewer workers. This distinction matters because it suggests that Ohio's workers face not the complete collapse of industries but rather their transformation into higher-productivity, lower-employment forms.
Ohio's layoff history over three decades reveals both cyclical patterns and deepening structural challenges. The late 1990s and early 2000s showed elevated activity, with 2001 producing 165 notices and 37,496 workers—the second-highest year in the entire dataset and likely reflecting the post-dot-com crash recession. The 2008-2009 financial crisis produced 200 notices in 2009 and 165 in 2008, reflecting both the auto industry's near-collapse and broader manufacturing contraction during the recession.
The recovery period from 2010 through 2019 showed declining notice counts and worker displacement, suggesting economic stabilization. Annual notices averaged 115 during this decade-long period, and worker displacement declined substantially compared to the crisis years. The pre-pandemic baseline appeared to be stabilizing around 100-160 notices annually.
Then came 2020, with its catastrophic 507 notices affecting 55,603 workers. The magnitude cannot be overstated—this single year exceeded the total of any previous two years and rivaled the entire employment impact of the 2008-2009 financial crisis compressed into months rather than years. The pandemic response created simultaneous shocks across hospitality, retail, healthcare administration, and business services that would normally unfold over years or decades.
The crucial question is whether 2021 onward represents recovery or new normalcy. The data suggests the latter. From 2021 through 2025, Ohio has filed 649 notices affecting 63,198 workers—an average of 162 notices and 12,640 workers annually. This exceeds the pre-pandemic average of roughly 100 notices annually by 62 percent. While far below the pandemic year's intensity, it represents persistent elevation above historical norms. The sustained elevated activity from 2020 through 2025 (1,156 notices, 111,801 workers) demonstrates that Ohio is not simply recovering but rather operating at a new, higher baseline of workforce disruption.
Understanding Ohio's layoff patterns requires situating them within the state's economic structure and historical identity. Ohio remains the seventh-largest state economy by GDP but has experienced decades of industrial restructuring. The state's economy, historically anchored by automotive production, steel manufacturing, and related industrial supply chains, faces permanent headwinds. American automotive production has migrated toward Southern states with lower labor costs and weaker union presence, while electric vehicle production, even when located in America, requires substantially fewer workers than legacy automotive plants.
Steel production represents another structural headwind. Ohio's integrated steel mills, once among the world's most productive facilities, face relentless competition from minimills and overseas producers. The shift toward lighter-weight materials in automotive and construction applications reduces steel demand. ArcelorMittal's presence in the layoff data reflects not a temporary cyclical downturn but rather decades-long industry contraction that is unlikely to reverse.
Yet Ohio's economy is not monolithic. The state has developed substantial healthcare, financial services, and information technology sectors, particularly in Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. The presence of large KeyCorp (6 notices, 1,275 workers) operations reflects financial services consolidation as regional banks face pressures from national competitors and digital banking. HealthSpan Partners, Crothall Healthcare, and Aramark operations across multiple Ohio cities indicate that healthcare, despite being a growth sector nationally, is undergoing significant consolidation and efficiency improvement.
The information technology sector's 113 notices and 13,374 affected workers suggests that even Ohio's knowledge economy is experiencing disruption, likely reflecting software development consolidation, outsourcing of routine IT functions, and the competitive pressures faced by regional tech firms competing against giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
For Ohio workers and policymakers, the immediate outlook requires attention to several convergent pressures. Manufacturing employment will continue declining as automation advances and electric vehicle adoption reduces the labor intensity of vehicle production. Even facilities that remain open will employ fewer workers. Retail consolidation will continue, with Amazon and other e-commerce platforms capturing additional market share. Healthcare consolidation will advance, generating efficiency gains but reducing employment in administrative and support roles even as patient demand grows.
The automation wave visible across manufacturing, retail, and increasingly healthcare and financial services represents an acceleration that seems unlikely to decelerate. Generative AI deployment, still in early stages, may further accelerate displacement across information technology, professional services, and administrative roles. The sectors most visible in Ohio's layoff data—manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, and retail—are precisely those where automation will advance most aggressively.
However, the data also suggests that Ohio's fundamental challenge is not that jobs disappear permanently but that they disappear and reappear elsewhere, often in different sectors and at different wage levels. The persistence of elevated layoff notices despite overall national economic growth suggests that Ohio is undergoing an accelerated reallocation process, where workers must transition not merely between employers but between economic sectors with different skill requirements and compensation levels.
For workers facing displacement, the implications are severe. A manufacturing worker with thirty years of experience at a facility closure faces not simply unemployment but the necessity of retraining for work in healthcare, information technology, or service sectors—often at substantially lower compensation and with credential requirements that demand years of additional education. The geographic concentration of layoffs in major metros creates intense labor supply increases in those markets, depressing wages even for workers not directly displaced.
State policymakers face the reality that workforce adjustment cannot be addressed through simple retraining programs. The scale of displacement—618 notices and 81,787 workers from 2020-2025—exceeds what regional education systems can efficiently absorb. The structural nature of the displacement requires not merely education policy adjustment but economic development strategies that attract new employers to Ohio and that help existing employers expand rather than contract. The challenge, however, is that Ohio's relative decline in population growth, aging workforce, and perception as a post-industrial region makes such attraction difficult compared to Sun Belt competitors with younger demographic profiles and strong population growth.
