WARN Act Layoffs in Vermont

In-Depth Analysis: Layoffs in Vermont

# Vermont's WARN-Tracked Layoffs: A Decade of Structural Decline and Cyclical Disruption

Executive Summary: Scale and Trajectory

Vermont has experienced 271 WARN Act notices affecting 12,807 workers over the past two decades, with the data revealing a state experiencing persistent labor market disruption masked by an overall modest headcount. The scale matters less than the pattern: layoffs spiked dramatically between 2015 and 2021, when the state filed 176 notices displacing 5,676 workers—nearly half of all tracked separations over the entire period. The recent trajectory is particularly concerning. After declining from 2022 through much of 2023, Vermont saw a resurgence beginning in late 2024, with 24 notices filed in 2024 and 2025 combined, signaling renewed sectoral stress rather than cyclical recovery.

What distinguishes Vermont's layoff profile is not the absolute numbers—a state of 645,000 people will naturally show smaller totals than national aggregates—but rather the concentration within a handful of employers and the dramatic collapse of its traditional industrial base. Keurig Dr Pepper alone accounts for 7 notices and 535 workers, roughly 4 percent of all displaced workers tracked. This level of single-employer dependency reveals a state vulnerable to corporate consolidation, supply chain rationalization, and the strategic decisions of multinational corporations headquartered elsewhere.

The Manufacturing Apocalypse: Vermont's Structural Challenge

Vermont's manufacturing sector has undergone a steady, measurable decline that WARN notices only partially capture. Between 2003 and 2025, the state filed 10 manufacturing-related WARN notices affecting just 276 workers—a figure that understates the sector's weakness because it excludes smaller layoffs below the 50-worker threshold and manufacturing-adjacent employment in transportation and warehousing. Yet the data points to a sector in managed decline rather than stable contraction.

The signature companies in this collapse tell the story. Capital City Press, a printing firm based in Montpelier, filed 3 notices for 234 workers between 2003 and 2025. Monahan Filaments and Specialty Filaments Inc, both serving industrial textile markets, each filed multiple notices. CFM Corporation/Vermont Castings, the woodstove manufacturer, filed 2 notices for 270 workers. These were once pillars of Vermont's small-town economies, each employing hundreds and anchoring their local tax bases.

The drivers are well understood but worth stating clearly: automation has reduced labor intensity in production; offshoring has relocated lower-skill manufacturing to lower-wage jurisdictions; and demand shifts in consumer goods have eliminated entire product categories. Ethan Allen, the furniture manufacturer with headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut, filed 2 notices affecting 238 workers. Furniture manufacturing, particularly the mid-market upholstered segment that Ethan Allen dominated, has faced two decades of import competition and changing consumer preferences toward mass-market retailers and online direct-to-consumer sales.

What emerges is a manufacturing sector that has fundamentally restructured. The jobs that remain are typically higher-skill (machining, advanced composites, specialized production) or are in niche markets (like Plasan Carbon Composites, which filed 2 notices for 127 workers, likely serving aerospace or defense). The entry-level manufacturing jobs that once provided pathways to middle-class incomes for workers without four-year degrees have largely vanished.

Beverage and Consumer Goods Concentration: The Keurig Effect

No single company illustrates Vermont's modern economic vulnerability more starkly than the Keurig enterprise. Keurig Dr Pepper filed 7 WARN notices affecting 535 workers, while Keurig Green Mountain, the Vermont-based subsidiary, filed an additional 2 notices affecting 235 workers. Combined, Keurig-affiliated entities account for 770 workers, representing approximately 6 percent of all WARN-tracked displacements statewide.

Keurig Green Mountain was Vermont's signature success story of the late 1990s and 2000s, pioneering the single-serve coffee pod market and growing from a startup into a national brand. The company's acquisition by Keurig Dr Pepper in 2016 and the subsequent consolidation of production and administrative functions across the parent company's footprint exemplifies how growth through acquisition often destroys local employment. Vermont kept some operations—the company still maintains a presence in Waterbury—but the combined entity rationalized overlapping functions, closed or consolidated facilities, and integrated supply chains in ways that eliminated jobs at the margin.

The Keurig story also illustrates a broader dynamic in consumer packaged goods: consolidation at the corporate level, automation of production and warehouse logistics, and the efficiency squeeze placed on regional manufacturing hubs by national distribution and cost-optimization pressure. The company's layoff pattern (multiple notices between 2003 and 2025) suggests an ongoing process of incremental downsizing rather than a single dramatic collapse, indicating management's attempt to maintain a footprint while adjusting headcount downward in response to market conditions and operational efficiency goals.

Healthcare and Hospitality: The Sectoral Paradox

Vermont's healthcare sector presents an instructive paradox. The Healthcare Industry filed 13 notices affecting 662 workers, ranking it among the top three layoff sectors. Yet healthcare is simultaneously Vermont's largest employment sector and its primary growth engine. The Howard Center, a community mental health and substance abuse treatment provider, filed 2 notices affecting 298 workers. Maple Ridge Memory Care and Lodge, a senior living facility, filed 2 notices affecting 126 workers.

These layoffs almost certainly reflect consolidation, operational restructuring, and the ongoing pressure exerted by Medicaid reimbursement rates that have not kept pace with inflation in labor and operational costs. Vermont's heavy reliance on Medicaid (the state ranks near the national median in Medicaid dependency, but given its aging demographics and rural character, the percentage of healthcare revenue derived from government programs is extraordinarily high) means that healthcare provider layoffs reflect not just corporate strategy but the downstream consequences of state and federal fiscal policy.

The Accommodation & Food Services Industry filed 9 notices affecting 930 workers, the second-largest absolute displacement. This sector's volatility reflects pandemic-era disruptions (the data includes 2020-2021) but also the structural challenge of sustaining hospitality employment in a rural state with a short tourism season and wage pressures driven by out-of-state recruitment for summer positions. The tourism-dependent economy of central Vermont (the Rutland area alone saw 7 notices affecting 395 workers) faces chronic employment instability as properties respond to seasonal demand, ownership changes, and the competitive pressure to reduce labor costs in a sector with limited pricing power.

Geographic Concentration and Regional Vulnerability

The geographic breakdown reveals a state where layoffs are heavily concentrated in a few workforce investment areas and cities, with profound implications for regional economic resilience. The catch-all category "Workforce Investment Area" accounts for 114 notices and 3,764 workers—nearly 42 percent of all tracked displacement—a figure that obscures geographic patterns but likely represents workers served across multiple small communities and rural areas outside the state's major city clusters.

Among named municipalities, the concentration is stark. Essex Junction (in Chittenden County, Vermont's most prosperous region anchored by Burlington) saw 9 notices affecting 794 workers. Burlington itself experienced 9 notices affecting 715 workers. These two contiguous communities absorbed 1,509 workers through WARN-tracked layoffs, representing roughly 12 percent of the statewide total. St Albans, a smaller city in Franklin County in the state's northwest, experienced 4 notices affecting 857 workers—a disproportionately large impact for a community of roughly 7,000 people. Brattleboro, in the state's southeastern corner, saw 7 notices affecting 514 workers.

What this geography reveals is that Vermont's layoffs are not evenly distributed but are instead concentrated in areas that host major employers, often facilities of larger out-of-state corporations. Brattleboro hosts operations for larger regional and national companies; Essex Junction is home to Global Foundries (3 notices, 148 workers), the semiconductor manufacturing company that represents one of Vermont's rare ventures into advanced industrial production. Monahan Filaments and related specialty filament producers cluster in the Springfield area (4 notices affecting 80 workers in North Springfield plus additional notices elsewhere), a legacy manufacturing town struggling to retain production employment.

The implication for regional policy is straightforward: small cities dependent on a single major employer face acute vulnerability. When that employer restructures, the local impact is severe and immediate. Unlike larger metropolitan areas where workers can more readily transition between employers and industries, small Vermont towns lack labor market thickness and sectoral diversity.

Historical Arc: The 2015 Shock and Ongoing Volatility

The data's temporal pattern is its most revealing feature. Between 2003 and 2014, Vermont averaged fewer than 3 notices per year, affecting roughly 200 workers annually. Then, in 2015, the state experienced 50 notices affecting 1,520 workers—a 16-fold increase in layoff frequency and a sevenfold increase in displacement. The following two years (2016-2017) saw 55 combined notices affecting 1,778 workers. This 2015-2017 period represents the state's most acute layoff stress in the two-decade span captured by the data.

What caused the 2015 shock? The data alone cannot answer definitively, but the timing aligns with several national trends: the continued maturation of e-commerce (disrupting Retail Trade, which saw 3 notices affecting 11 workers statewide, a trivially small number that actually underscores how completely brick-and-mortar retail employment had already been decimated before 2015), the acceleration of manufacturing automation and supply chain rationalization, and the persistent consolidation pressure in healthcare and consumer goods.

The period from 2018 to 2022 showed some moderation, with annual notices declining to single digits except for 2020, when the pandemic spike (20 notices, 1,709 workers) occurred. Notably, the 2020 figure was substantially driven by hospitality layoffs related to pandemic-induced shutdowns, a cyclical event distinct from structural decline.

The recent trajectory is concerning. After 2022-2023 showed some stabilization (6 notices in 2022, 10 in 2023), 2024 saw 10 notices affecting 341 workers, with 2025 already recording 14 notices affecting 449 workers, suggesting a renewed uptick in restructuring activity. Whether this reflects a new cycle of consolidation, sectoral strain, or merely statistical noise in small-sample quarterly data remains uncertain, but the pattern warrants monitoring.

Information Technology: Vermont's Ambivalent Sector

Vermont has pursued technology sector development for two decades, yet the sector's layoff profile reveals limited success in creating stable, resilient employment. Information & Technology filed 10 notices affecting 250 workers—the third-largest layoff sector but involving relatively small individual displacements (an average of 25 workers per notice). Computer Sciences Corporation filed 2 notices affecting 185 workers, while ITC Federal filed 3 notices affecting 88 workers.

These layoffs primarily affected service and support functions rather than core software development or advanced technical work. Computer Sciences Corporation, a large defense contractor, consolidated operations across its footprint, impacting Vermont as a peripheral location. ITC Federal, a smaller firm, likely faced competitive pressure in the federal IT services market.

The modest size of IT layoffs relative to the sector's importance in Vermont's growth narrative suggests either that IT employment remains thin relative to other sectors (itself a policy concern, given the state's investment in tech development) or that layoffs have been concentrated in smaller firms with low WARN-Act visibility. The sector has attracted substantial investment and policy attention, yet the data suggests it has not yet achieved the scale or stability to meaningfully offset manufacturing decline or provide mass employment pathways for displaced workers.

The Path Forward: Structural Adjustment Without Parallel Growth

Vermont faces a fundamental economic challenge evident in its WARN-Act record: the state is experiencing continuous downsizing in traditional sectors (manufacturing, retail, some consumer goods production) without generating commensurate growth in replacement employment. Healthcare expansion, driven by aging demographics and Medicaid spending, provides some offset, but healthcare wages are moderate and healthcare employment is heavily dependent on government reimbursement rates, making it vulnerable to fiscal austerity.

The state's ability to absorb future layoffs depends on accelerating growth in higher-wage sectors (advanced manufacturing, software development, professional services, advanced healthcare) and ensuring that displaced workers have genuine pathways into these emerging opportunities. The data offers no evidence that this transition is occurring at scale. The small size of IT layoffs suggests IT employment remains concentrated and not yet broad-based. Advanced manufacturing (represented by Global Foundries in semiconductors) remains geographically concentrated and dependent on cyclical demand.

Policymakers should attend to the gap between job losses in traditional sectors and job creation in emerging ones. Workers displaced from manufacturing or administrative positions in consolidated firms rarely possess the skills to directly transition into software development or specialized technical roles. The absence of large-scale retraining investment or intermediate-wage job creation in growth sectors means that many displaced workers face downward mobility into lower-wage hospitality or service work, effectively reducing regional earning power and purchasing capacity.

The 2025 uptick in layoff activity, while preliminary, suggests that Vermont's structural adjustment process remains incomplete. Sustained attention to workforce development, sectoral diversification, and targeted investment in industries where the state possesses comparative advantage is necessary but presently insufficient given the scale of ongoing displacement.