WARN Act Layoffs in Tennessee

In-Depth Analysis: Layoffs in Tennessee

# Tennessee's Workforce Disruption: A Comprehensive WARN Analysis

Executive Summary

Tennessee has experienced substantial workforce disruption over the past 14 years, with 1,366 WARN notices affecting 130,981 workers across the state. The data reveals a labor market characterized by acute sectoral volatility, geographic concentration in major metropolitan areas, and a dramatic pandemic spike followed by uneven recovery. The 2020 pandemic year stands as an exceptional outlier, generating 423 notices displacing 37,719 workers—representing 31% of all notices and 29% of all affected workers in the dataset. Excluding this anomalous year, Tennessee has averaged roughly 60 notices annually affecting approximately 6,000 workers, suggesting a baseline level of structural economic adjustment. However, 2025 data already shows 62 notices affecting 9,921 workers, indicating that post-pandemic normalization has not produced the quiet labor market some might have anticipated.

The state's layoff pattern reflects both cyclical economic forces and durable structural transformations in its industrial base. Manufacturing remains the dominant source of workforce displacement, accounting for 105 notices and 16,505 affected workers—a concentration driven by automation, supply chain rationalization, and persistent competition from lower-wage jurisdictions. Meanwhile, accommodation and food service, traditionally resilient sectors in Tennessee's tourism and hospitality economy, have suffered 62 notices displacing 9,136 workers, indicating permanent demand shifts rather than temporary disruption.

Manufacturing's Structural Decline and Automation Pressures

Manufacturing drives Tennessee's layoff narrative, representing 7.7% of all notices but accounting for 12.5% of displaced workers. This disproportionality reflects that manufacturing job losses tend to be large-scale events affecting entire facilities or production lines, whereas other sectors often experience smaller, more distributed reductions. The industry's prominence in the WARN data reflects both the state's historical identity as a manufacturing hub and the sector's ongoing transformation through mechanization and globalization.

Goodman Manufacturing Company L.P., a leading HVAC equipment producer headquartered in Houston with substantial Tennessee operations, leads all employers with 11 notices affecting 1,532 workers. Goodman's repeated filings across multiple years suggest deliberate capacity rationalization rather than isolated cyclical downturns. The company's pattern aligns with broader dynamics in climate control manufacturing, where consolidation, product consolidation, and automation have reduced headcount even as production volumes remain stable or grow. Similar dynamics affect General Motors, which filed 3 notices displacing 1,390 workers—reflecting the ongoing reorientation of American automotive manufacturing toward electric vehicles and away from traditional internal-combustion platforms that long anchored Tennessee's industrial economy.

WestRock (5 notices, 323 workers), a containerboard and corrugated packaging manufacturer, and Resolute Forest Products (4 notices, 709 workers), a tissue and forest products company, exemplify another structural force: the secular decline in packaging and paper demand driven by digitalization, e-commerce consolidation (which uses fewer, more optimized shipping containers), and environmental pressure to reduce packaging waste. These companies are not failing but rather right-sizing operations to match lower demand for traditional cardboard and paper products.

The manufacturing sector's workforce reductions cannot be fully attributed to cyclical recession. Rather, they reflect permanent shifts in production technology, global competitive positioning, and product mix. Tennessee manufacturers competing against lower-wage regions in Mexico, Vietnam, and Indonesia face relentless pressure to automate remaining operations. A ZF Active Safety and Electronics US LLC facility (4 notices, 646 workers) producing automotive electronics components exemplifies the challenge: even as vehicle electrification creates new opportunity, automation of wire-harness, brake-control, and sensor-manufacturing work eliminates more jobs than it creates.

Hospitality, Healthcare, and Service Sector Turbulence

Tennessee's second-largest source of layoffs, Accommodation & Food Services with 62 notices affecting 9,136 workers, tells a more complex story than manufacturing's structural decline. Aramark, a food-service and facilities-management company, filed 6 notices displacing 1,163 workers—likely reflecting a combination of contract losses, client consolidations, and labor-cost pressures. Marriott International filed 5 notices affecting 262 workers, suggesting selective property closures or management transitions rather than system-wide contraction. Regal Cinemas (3 notices, 644 workers) faced catastrophic demand destruction as streaming services and the pandemic permanently altered theatrical consumption patterns.

Hospitality and food service employment proved vulnerable not just to cyclical downturns but to secular shifts in consumer behavior. The pre-pandemic baseline for this sector shows steady but modest activity (averaging roughly 4 notices annually from 2012-2019), but post-pandemic years show elevated layoff activity (6 notices in 2023, ongoing strain into 2025). This pattern suggests that while the sector did recover employment after 2020, the recovery produced fewer jobs at lower wages than pre-pandemic conditions, with excess capacity eliminated through permanent closures rather than temporary furloughs.

Healthcare employment, traditionally thought of as a stable growth sector, generated 61 notices affecting 6,767 workers. PharMEDium Healthcare Corporation (3 notices, 607 workers), a pharmaceutical outsourcing company, faced operational consolidation and client mergers that reduced its footprint. HCFS Health Care Financial Services filed multiple notices (shown as 4 notices each for two slightly different legal entities) affecting 584 combined workers, suggesting administrative consolidation within healthcare billing and revenue-cycle management. These reductions likely reflect consolidation within healthcare administration and outsourcing, where scale advantages reward larger operators and pressures smaller-footprint service providers.

Geographic Concentration and Regional Economic Vulnerability

Layoff activity concentrates heavily in Tennessee's largest metropolitan areas, with Memphis (77 notices, 9,717 workers) and Chattanooga (70 notices, 4,795 workers) accounting for nearly 11% of all notices statewide. When county-level data are examined—Shelby County (which encompasses Memphis) shows 50 notices affecting 7,227 workers, while Davidson County (Nashville) shows 33 notices affecting 4,134 workers—the concentration becomes even clearer. These four jurisdictions alone account for roughly 230 notices and 25,700 affected workers, or approximately 17% of statewide displacement activity.

The geographic skew reflects the concentration of large employers in Tennessee's major metros. Memphis hosts significant operations for FedEx (4 notices, 981 workers), Walmart (4 notices, 326 workers), and various healthcare and logistics firms. Chattanooga has historically depended on manufacturing and is home to operations in automotive, food processing, and industrial distribution. Nashville's layoff activity reflects its growth in healthcare, finance, and tourism, sectors that have experienced selective facility closures and administrative consolidations.

However, notable layoff activity in smaller cities reveals vulnerabilities in less-diversified labor markets. Lincoln County (9 notices, 1,515 workers) experienced disproportionate displacement relative to its size, likely concentrated in a few large employers operating in manufacturing or agriculture. Kingsport (8 notices, 1,439 workers), historically dependent on chemical manufacturing and pharmaceutical production, has suffered repeated facility closures as companies rationalize regional production networks. These smaller metros lack the employment diversity that larger cities use to absorb displaced workers, creating more persistent local economic damage.

The geographic pattern also reveals Memphis's particular vulnerability to transportation-sector shocks. As a major FedEx hub and logistics center, Memphis's economy is deeply exposed to transportation-sector restructuring. The 77 notices affecting nearly 10,000 workers represent a significant share of the metro's employment base, creating genuine hardship in a city with limited alternative large-employer options in some sectors.

The Pandemic Inflection Point and Uneven Recovery

Historical analysis reveals that 2020 represented a singular shock. The 423 notices filed that year—more than three times any other year in the dataset—displaced 37,719 workers across all sectors. Manufacturing notices fell from the pre-pandemic baseline but accommodation and food services exploded, generating 134 notices in 2020 alone. Healthcare generated 23 notices that year. This pattern reflects both the initial demand collapse in hospitality and the subsequent restructuring of operations to operate under reduced capacity, occupancy restrictions, and changed consumer preferences.

The recovery from 2020 has been uneven. 2021 showed dramatic improvement with only 27 notices affecting 3,077 workers—a 94% decline in notices and 92% decline in affected workers. However, this recovery proved transitory. 2023 and 2024 saw resurgence, with 72 and 67 notices respectively, suggesting the labor market did not return to pre-pandemic equilibrium but rather stabilized at a new, slightly elevated baseline.

Critically, 2025 already shows 62 notices affecting 9,921 workers with ten months remaining in the year. Extrapolated to full-year basis, this pace would produce approximately 74 notices and roughly 11,900 affected workers—well above the 2012-2019 historical average and approaching pandemic-adjacent levels. This trajectory suggests that structural forces, not merely cyclical swings, are driving persistent workforce displacement.

Major Employers: Patterns in Repeated Filings

The concentration of WARN notices among a small number of firms reveals important dynamics about how large employers manage workforce adjustments. Goodman Manufacturing's 11 notices across multiple years suggests planned, sequential capacity reduction rather than sudden crisis. Each notice likely reflected either a single facility consolidation or a multi-year restructuring program implemented through incremental steps. This pattern allows the company to negotiate with unions, manage supply-chain adjustments, and avoid catastrophic capital losses from sudden capacity elimination.

Aramark's 6 notices similarly suggest administrative consolidations across multiple contract locations. As a services provider whose business involves facility management and food service at client locations, Aramark's notices likely reflect the loss or consolidation of large contracts rather than organic growth failure.

Memphis City Schools' 5 notices affecting 1,694 workers represent an unusual case: a public institution filing WARN notices. School districts typically file these notices during budget crises or demographic collapses that force closing of schools and reduction of central administrative staff. The notices suggest that Memphis's school district faced declining enrollment, budget pressure, or consolidation that required permanent staff reductions.

The data reveal that large employers use WARN notices not as crisis management tools alone but as planned, sequential management of structural workforce adjustments. Firms like Goodman and Aramark that file multiple notices across years are executing deliberate strategies, not responding to sudden shocks. This pattern distinguishes structural decline from cyclical disruption and suggests that affected workers face permanent rather than temporary displacement.

Economic Context and Structural Outlook

Tennessee's position as a mid-tier manufacturing state, home to significant automotive assembly and components production, explains the persistent manufacturing presence in WARN data. The state's automotive cluster—centered in middle Tennessee—long provided employment stability that offset declines in other sectors. However, the shift toward electric vehicle production, the consolidation of component suppliers, and the automation of remaining plants have eroded this stabilizer.

Simultaneously, Tennessee's growth in healthcare, professional services, and finance has created new employment opportunities. However, these sectors tend to employ workers with different skill sets and geographic locations than manufacturing. A laid-off machine operator in Lincoln County faces limited opportunities to transition to healthcare administration in Nashville. This geographic and skills mismatch means that aggregate job growth masks substantial local hardship.

The state's relatively low unemployment rate in recent years obscures the WARN data's implications. Workers displaced from manufacturing or hospitality often transition to lower-wage service employment, part-time arrangements, or exit the labor force entirely. WARN notices capture permanent displacement but not the wage or benefit losses that displaced workers experience in new employment.

Critical Monitoring Points for Workers and Policymakers

Tennessee workers and policymakers should monitor several emerging signals. First, continued strength in 2025 WARN notices suggests that post-pandemic normalization has not arrived. The elevated filing pace through mid-2025 indicates ongoing structural adjustment rather than equilibration. Second, the persistent concentration of displacement in manufacturing and hospitality suggests that these sectors face durable, not temporary, headwinds. Third, the geographic concentration in Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Knoxville means that local labor-market conditions in smaller metros deserve specific attention; Lincoln County's disproportionate displacement merits targeted workforce development investment.

The decline in manufacturing employment, now representing a smaller share of the state's economy than two decades ago, reflects national trends that state policy cannot reverse. However, targeted investment in workforce retraining, community college capacity in displaced-worker counties, and business recruitment in sectors offering comparable wage scales could mitigate local economic damage. The WARN data provide early warning of these challenges; the question is whether policymakers will respond with equivalent urgency.