WARN Act Layoffs in Oklahoma

In-Depth Analysis: Layoffs in Oklahoma

# Oklahoma's Layoff Landscape: A Comprehensive Economic Analysis

Executive Summary

Oklahoma has experienced 693 WARN Act notices affecting 80,491 workers over the period documented in this dataset—a figure that represents substantial labor market disruption for a state with a total workforce of roughly 1.9 million. The scale of these layoffs has not been uniform; instead, the data reveals sharp temporal clustering, with 2020 alone accounting for 83 notices and 9,578 workers, and the 2015-2016 period producing 134 notices across just two years. This concentration suggests that Oklahoma's workforce reductions have been driven less by gradual economic decline than by sector-specific shocks—primarily the collapse of energy prices in 2015-2016, the broad pandemic-related disruptions of 2020, and ongoing structural changes in retail, manufacturing, and transportation. The state's layoff trajectory peaked in 2020 before contracting sharply in 2023-2024, though the composition of affected workers reveals persistent vulnerabilities in industries central to Oklahoma's economic identity.

Industry Concentration and Structural Forces

The distribution of WARN notices across industries exposes the vulnerabilities baked into Oklahoma's economic base. The Utilities sector leads with 36 notices affecting 4,154 workers, followed closely by Manufacturing (31 notices, 2,702 workers), Healthcare (30 notices, 2,176 workers), and Information & Technology (21 notices, 2,604 workers). This ordering is deceptive—while Utilities accounts for the most notices, the far larger worker impact comes from concentrated shocks in oil and gas-adjacent sectors that don't fit neatly into traditional classification schemes.

The energy sector's fingerprint is unmistakable. Halliburton, Baker Hughes, SandRidge Energy, WPX Energy, Weatherford, Devon Energy, and Williams Companies collectively filed 35 notices affecting 4,253 workers. These companies represent Oklahoma's traditional economic lifeblood, and their prominence in the layoff data—particularly the clustering in 2015-2016—reflects the devastating impact of crude oil prices that fell from over $100 per barrel in mid-2014 to below $30 by early 2016. A single industry shock thus rippled across Oklahoma's workforce in ways that generic industry aggregation obscures.

The Retail sector tells a different story of structural decline. K Mart, Montgomery Wards, Regal Cinemas, and smaller retailers collectively filed 21 notices affecting 1,698 workers. These are not cyclical layoffs responding to temporary demand weakness; they represent the permanent contraction of retail formats that e-commerce and changing consumer preferences have rendered uncompetitive. K Mart alone filed six notices, while Montgomery Wards—a company that survived the 1980s but finally liquidated operations in 2001—appears in this historical dataset as a reminder that some business model failures are terminal rather than temporary.

Manufacturing layoffs, while numerically smaller than utilities, reflect automation and supply chain reorganization. Celestica (4 notices, 760 workers), VF Jeanswear/Wrangler (3 notices, 1,239 workers), and Carlisle Brake and Friction (3 notices, 441 workers) illustrate how even moderate-sized manufacturing operations have rationalized workforces. The VF Jeanswear layoffs are particularly instructive—a major apparel manufacturer with deep roots in Oklahoma saw its workforce repeatedly reduced, consistent with broader trends in U.S. apparel manufacturing where automation and offshore production have eliminated millions of domestic jobs.

Information & Technology layoffs (21 notices, 2,604 workers) represent a newer vulnerability. Sitel (3 notices, 522 workers) and Siemens (3 notices, 174 workers) suggest that even tech and tech-adjacent sectors—traditionally positioned as growth industries—have experienced significant workforce reductions in Oklahoma. This reflects the sector's geographic concentration in coastal tech hubs and the relative decline of legacy IT service providers competing against lower-cost alternatives.

Geographic Concentration and Regional Disparities

Oklahoma City and Tulsa together account for 271 notices and 35,340 workers—approximately 44% of all notices and 44% of all affected workers statewide. This concentration is economically rational given that both cities function as regional employment centers, but it masks important distributional consequences. Oklahoma City's 136 notices and 19,451 affected workers represent disruptions to the state's largest metro area, while Tulsa's 135 notices and 15,889 affected workers demonstrate how the oil and gas collapse hit the state's second-largest city with roughly equivalent force.

The remaining 422 notices and 45,151 workers were dispersed across smaller cities and regions, creating a long tail of localized labor market shocks. Norman (13 notices, 2,051 workers) reflects disruptions centered on the University of Oklahoma and surrounding professional services. Ada (13 notices, 1,220 workers), Lawton (9 notices, 1,251 workers), and McAlester (7 notices, 1,131 workers) experienced significant shocks from single employers or small clusters of firms. In smaller labor markets, such concentrated layoffs create outsized local impacts—a 1,200-worker reduction in Ada represents approximately 1.5 percent of the city's likely workforce, compared to 0.2 percent statewide impact.

Broken Arrow (10 notices, 1,029 workers), Moore (7 notices, 1,217 workers), and Pryor (7 notices, 1,042 workers) represent suburban and exurban job centers that experienced non-trivial workforce reductions. The fact that these are sprawling across the state rather than concentrated in capital city indicates that Oklahoma's labor market adjustments have had geographic breadth rather than being isolated to a few metros.

Major Employers and Corporate Restructuring Patterns

Halliburton's nine notices affecting 1,598 workers represent the single largest employer engagement with Oklahoma's layoff process. As a global oilfield services company headquartered in Houston but with major Oklahoma operations, Halliburton exemplifies how multinational energy firms responded to the 2015-2016 price collapse by aggressively cutting headcount across their footprint. The company's multiple notices (rather than a single large notice) suggests layoffs occurred in waves as the depth of the commodity downturn became apparent and restructuring plans evolved.

Enterprise Holdings (6 notices, 519 workers), Hertz (4 notices, 614 workers), and American Airlines (3 notices, 1,197 workers) dominate the transportation sector's layoff profile. Hertz is particularly notable as it filed multiple notices before ultimately filing for bankruptcy in 2020, making these WARN notices harbingers of complete corporate failure. American Airlines' 1,197 affected workers across three notices reflect the aviation industry's cyclical sensitivity—likely including adjustments during the 2008-2009 financial crisis and subsequent recessions.

SandRidge Energy, Devon Energy, WPX Energy, and Williams Companies together account for eight notices and roughly 1,758 workers. These are all Oklahoma-based or Oklahoma-headquartered energy companies that experienced the full force of the oil and gas downturn. Unlike Halliburton, which could reallocate resources globally, these companies had fewer geographic escape routes and bore concentrated impact from energy price declines.

The retail sector's representation—K Mart (6 notices, 490 workers), Montgomery Wards (5 notices, 653 workers), and Regal Cinemas (5 notices, 555 workers)—represents not cyclical adjustment but secular decline. These formats have been fundamentally disrupted by e-commerce, streaming video, and changing consumer behavior. There is no expectation that these workers will be reabsorbed into expanded retail operations; the sector is contracting permanently.

Fleming (5 notices, 773 workers), a food wholesaler, and Walmart (4 notices, 237 workers) illustrate consolidation and automation in food distribution and retail. Fleming eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2003 as it faced competitive pressure from larger wholesalers like Sysco and performance challenges it could not overcome—a case of market selection rather than cyclical weakness.

Temporal Patterns and Economic Cycle Alignment

The year-by-year breakdown reveals three distinct periods of elevated layoff activity. The first wave (2001-2003) saw 92 notices and 12,878 workers affected, coinciding with the post-9/11 recession and the 2000-2002 bear market. This period included significant manufacturing reductions and the initial wave of retail consolidation as weak demand persisted through the early 2000s.

The second wave (2015-2016) produced 134 notices and 9,762 workers affected—the commodity crash era. Oil prices fell 60 percent from mid-2014 to early 2016, and Oklahoma's energy-dependent economy bore the brunt. Companies like SandRidge Energy, WPX Energy, and Weatherford all appeared in WARN filings during this interval. The subsequent recovery was gradual; 2017-2019 saw 107 notices and 10,132 workers, suggesting that energy sector stabilization did not immediately restore hiring but rather stabilized at a lower employment level.

The pandemic period (2020) produced 83 notices and 9,578 workers affected, the highest annual total. Hospitality, transportation (airlines), and services sectors were hit hardest, though the data does not disaggregate by notice type (temporary furloughs versus permanent layoffs). This was followed by 2021-2024 showing relative stabilization, with notice frequency declining but not returning to pre-2015 lows. Notably, 2024 and 2025 show very low notice counts, potentially indicating either labor market tightness or data lag effects.

The overall trajectory shows no consistent downward trend that would suggest persistent Oklahoma economic decline. Rather, the data reflect sector-specific shocks—energy, retail, manufacturing—that have episodically disrupted specific industries rather than evidence of systematic state-level deterioration. Employment has adjusted downward in specific sectors while other sectors have presumably absorbed some of this labor supply, though the WARN data cannot track reemployment outcomes.

Economic Context: Oklahoma's Structural Position

Oklahoma's economic base has historically centered on energy extraction, agriculture, and related manufacturing and distribution. The state's gross state product is approximately $285 billion, with energy and mining accounting for roughly 8-10 percent of state GDP during normal times (rising during commodity booms, falling during collapses). The prominence of energy companies in the layoff data reflects both the absolute importance of energy to the state and the extreme cyclicality of commodity-dependent industries.

The prominence of agriculture-related layoffs (8 notices, 751 workers) and agricultural equipment manufacturing within the broader manufacturing category reflects Oklahoma's continued role as a major agricultural state. However, agriculture itself employs relatively few workers in modern Oklahoma—roughly 1.5-2 percent of the workforce—making it economically smaller than its cultural and political prominence might suggest.

The rise of Information & Technology layoffs (21 notices, 2,604 workers), while numerically significant, does not indicate a robust tech sector but rather reflects the layoffs of tech support and business process outsourcing centers. Sitel's presence here is emblematic—call centers and IT service delivery centers in Oklahoma have faced relentless pressure from offshore outsourcing and automation. The state never developed the venture capital ecosystems or talent pipelines that support sustainable tech sector growth in coastal metros.

Healthcare (30 notices, 2,176 workers) appears as a growing source of layoffs, likely reflecting hospital consolidation, insurance industry changes, and the sector's vulnerability to reimbursement and regulatory changes. As healthcare represents one of Oklahoma's genuine growth sectors, these layoffs are notable as they suggest even traditionally stable healthcare employment faces disruption.

Oklahoma's unemployment rate has historically tracked national rates reasonably closely, suggesting that labor market shocks here are primarily sector-specific rather than state-specific macroeconomic failures. The state's economic growth has been modest—roughly in line with or slightly below national growth rates—and workforce participation rates have declined as they have nationwide.

Implications and Outlook

The WARN data through 2024 suggest several forward-looking implications. First, Oklahoma remains vulnerable to energy price shocks given the continued presence of energy companies headquartered or significantly operated in the state. A sustained oil price collapse below $40 would likely trigger another wave of energy sector layoffs similar to 2015-2016. Conversely, energy price stability or increases would likely support continued employment at current reduced levels.

Second, the ongoing contraction in retail employment is structural and permanent. No future year should be expected to see retail employment restoration to pre-e-commerce levels. Workers displaced from retail face significant retraining challenges and often experience downward mobility in terms of wages and benefits when reemployed.

Third, manufacturing employment in Oklahoma is likely to continue gradual decline as automation advances and supply chains remain oriented toward offshore production or coastal U.S. locations with better logistics infrastructure. VF Jeanswear's continued presence in the WARN notices over multiple years suggests the company has been managing a multi-year contraction rather than facing a sudden shock.

Fourth, healthcare and education employment has proven more resilient than energy, retail, or manufacturing, but these sectors are not growing rapidly enough to absorb all displaced workers from contracting sectors. This suggests potential persistent underemployment or downward occupational mobility for some displaced workers.

Fifth, the data through early 2024 showing low notice counts may reflect either genuine labor market tightness that is moderating layoff activity or data lag effects. If the data are current, it would suggest that layoff activity has genuinely moderated below the historical average.

The most significant unresolved question is whether displaced energy workers from the 2015-2016 downturn have successfully transitioned to other employment or whether they remain in underemployment or joblessness. The WARN data provide no visibility into reemployment outcomes, only the fact of separation. For workers in their 50s with 25+ years of experience in energy sector technical roles, reemployment in new sectors at equivalent wages is often impossible, creating genuine hardship independent of overall state economic performance.

Oklahoma's layoff trajectory reflects both national economic cycles and sector-specific disruptions in industries central to the state's economic identity. Neither energy stabilization at lower employment levels nor the permanent secular decline of retail and traditional manufacturing offer straightforward paths to restored employment growth, suggesting that Oklahoma's workforce faces a multi-year structural adjustment with uneven distributional consequences across workers, regions, and sectors.