WARN Act Layoffs in Green Bay, Wisconsin

Analysis: Layoffs in Green Bay, Wisconsin

# Green Bay Layoff Analysis: Economic Disruption Across Multiple Sectors

Overview: Scale and Significance of Green Bay Layoffs

Green Bay has recorded 22 WARN notices affecting 2,196 workers over the past decade, representing a significant if episodic disruption to the city's labor market. The concentration of impact is striking: a single employer, Greater Green Bay YMCA, accounts for 829 of those layoffs—approximately 38 percent of all affected workers from a single notice filed. This top-heavy distribution reveals both the vulnerability of Green Bay's economy to large institutional decisions and the presence of a few dominant employers whose staffing choices reverberate through the broader community.

When contextualized against Wisconsin's current labor market, these layoffs take on additional meaning. The state's insured unemployment rate stands at 1.08 percent as of early April 2026, reflecting a relatively tight labor market, yet Wisconsin has experienced a 14.2 percent increase in initial jobless claims over the past four weeks. Green Bay's accumulated layoff burden, while modest in absolute terms compared to larger metropolitan regions, likely concentrates impact more heavily on specific neighborhoods and demographic groups than statewide averages suggest.

The temporal distribution of these layoffs reveals cyclical patterns tied to national economic conditions. Two notices in 2016 suggest baseline adjustments during post-recession recovery. A notable escalation occurred during 2019–2020, when notices jumped from four to nine annually—a 125 percent increase that coincides with the onset of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions and their cascading effects on retail, hospitality, and support services. The subsequent decline to one notice in 2023 and one in 2024 suggests stabilization, though the data cuts off before capturing potential reverberations from current 2026 labor market tightening.

Key Employers and Sector-Specific Disruptions

The dominance of Greater Green Bay YMCA in Green Bay's layoff profile warrants particular examination. A single notice generating 829 layoffs suggests institutional restructuring rather than gradual workforce contraction—likely reflecting consolidation of YMCA operations across the greater Green Bay region, closure of specific facilities, or comprehensive service realignment. This 829-worker reduction falls under the government/nonprofit classification, indicating that contraction pressures extend beyond traditional for-profit sectors.

The second-largest layoff involved Georgia Pacific Consumer Operations with 186 workers, representing manufacturing sector headcount reduction. Alorica, a customer service outsourcing firm, laid off 157 workers through IT and telecommunications operations. These three employers alone account for 1,172 workers affected—more than half of Green Bay's total layoff impact. The concentration of impact among three major employers indicates that Green Bay's layoff experience reflects strategic corporate decisions by regional economic anchors rather than broad-based sectoral decline.

Retail sector disruptions appear clustered in the mid-sized range. Shopko Store Support Center (140 workers), The Finish Line (131 workers), and Sears Holdings (43 workers) collectively represent 314 retail-sector layoffs. These notices span the 2016–2020 period and reflect the documented structural decline of brick-and-mortar retail across the United States, driven by e-commerce competition and changing consumer behavior. The Shopko and Finish Line layoffs specifically represented broader chain consolidations and bankruptcy-adjacent workforce reductions that affected multiple cities simultaneously.

Manufacturing, traditionally a cornerstone of Wisconsin's economy, shows modest presence in the layoff data with three notices affecting 129 workers. Georgia Pacific accounts for 186 of the 247 retail-sector notices, while Bay Fabrication (53 workers) and RGL Specialty Solutions (70 workers) represent more targeted manufacturing adjustments. This suggests manufacturing employment in Green Bay remains relatively stable compared to retail, though concentrated in fewer, larger establishments.

Industry Patterns and Structural Forces

Sectoral breakdown reveals four distinct disruption narratives operating simultaneously in Green Bay's economy. Retail leads with four notices affecting 247 workers, driven by documented national shifts toward e-commerce and discount formats. Accommodation and food service follows with three notices affecting 112 workers—a sector experiencing persistent staffing challenges and margin compression post-pandemic. Manufacturing, despite its historical significance to Wisconsin, shows three notices affecting 129 workers, reflecting automation and supply chain reorganization rather than wholesale industry decline.

Government and nonprofit institutions emerge as an outsized factor through the YMCA notice alone, inflating that category to 829 workers. Excluding this single large notice, government/nonprofit represents only 0.1 percent of baseline employment disruption, suggesting the typical stability of public-sector positions relative to private-sector volatility.

Transportation and logistics, sectors critical to Wisconsin's economy given its geographic position and distribution infrastructure, show two notices affecting 155 workers. Schneider National Carriers, a major trucking and logistics firm, laid off 85 workers. These layoffs likely reflect automation in dispatch operations, consolidation of service centers, or fleet optimization rather than fundamental demand reduction in logistics services.

The presence of isolated notices in healthcare (Tower Clock Eye Center, 75 workers), information technology (Alorica, 157 workers), wholesale trade, and real estate indicates that Green Bay's layoff experience cuts across employment sectors rather than concentrating in a single vulnerable industry. This diversification, while not protective against individual shocks, suggests that no single sector collapse drives Green Bay's overall employment narrative.

Historical Trends: Cyclicality and the Pandemic Effect

Layoff patterns from 2016 through 2024 reveal a pronounced pandemic-era spike followed by stabilization. The baseline of 2016 (two notices affecting an unknown worker count) represents routine labor market adjustment. Growth to three notices in 2018 and four notices in 2019 follows the gradual pace of post-recession normalization.

The dramatic spike to nine notices in 2020 represents the pandemic disruption inflection point. This year captures multiple industries simultaneously adjusting to lockdowns, demand collapse, and operational uncertainty. The YMCA notice (829 workers) represents the largest single shock and likely occurred as facility closures and program suspensions necessitated staffing reductions. Retail notices intensified as consumer behavior shifted and weakly-positioned chains exited markets. Hospitality and accommodation services contracted sharply. This 2020 peak, with 9 notices, represents the most concentrated layoff year in Green Bay's documented history.

The subsequent decline to two notices in 2022 and one notice each in 2023 and 2024 suggests labor market normalization and recovery, though the 2024 data is incomplete. This recovery trajectory aligns with national labor market tightening, falling unemployment rates, and return to sustained job growth. The current Wisconsin insured unemployment rate of 1.08 percent and BLS unemployment rate of 3.3 percent indicate robust local and state labor market conditions that would support lower layoff propensity.

Local Economic Impact and Community Consequences

The concentration of 2,196 layoffs across 22 notices means that Green Bay faces episodic rather than chronic disruption, but the timing and sectoral incidence create genuine hardship for affected populations. The YMCA layoff affected 829 workers—roughly 0.4 percent of Green Bay's estimated workforce of approximately 200,000. While statistically modest, 829 simultaneous layoffs in a mid-sized city disrupt specific geographic neighborhoods, overwhelm local workforce retraining capacity, and generate fiscal pressure on unemployment insurance systems.

The retail layoffs (247 workers across four notices) hit lower-wage workers who typically have minimal financial buffers and face extended job search periods given the secular decline of retail employment. Shopko and The Finish Line layoffs represented sudden job loss for workers whose skills, while transferable, face reduced demand in an economy where retail employment has contracted by nearly 500,000 positions nationally since 2010.

Manufacturing layoffs (129 workers across three notices), while modest in count, affect workers with potentially higher wage levels and more specialized skills. The presence of Georgia Pacific reflects that Green Bay retains significant forest-products-sector employment despite broader industry consolidation. Loss of 186 manufacturing jobs signals that even established incumbents face relentless pressure to optimize headcount through automation and process improvement.

Transportation and logistics layoffs (155 workers) reflect ongoing automation in dispatch, routing, and administrative functions—high-skill reductions that affect supervisory and technical workers rather than drivers, whose employment remains robust given current driver shortages across the trucking industry.

The temporal clustering of 2020 layoffs, coinciding with pandemic lockdowns, created compounding stress on Green Bay's community infrastructure. Simultaneous reductions across nonprofit (YMCA), retail (multiple chains), hospitality, and logistics created cascading secondary effects: reduced tax revenue, increased demand for emergency assistance, elevated pressure on workforce retraining programs, and psychological stress on workers facing simultaneous economic uncertainty alongside public health crisis.

Regional Context: Green Bay Within Wisconsin

Wisconsin's state-level labor market data provides context for assessing Green Bay's relative experience. The state's insured unemployment rate of 1.08 percent reflects tight labor markets consistent with sub-4 percent BLS unemployment. Wisconsin's year-over-year improvement in initial jobless claims—down 50 percent compared to the prior year—indicates favorable labor market momentum at the state level.

Yet Wisconsin's four-week trend in initial jobless claims shows a 14.2 percent increase, suggesting labor market softening in recent weeks. This recent uptick, though modest, may presage increased layoff activity in coming quarters if the trend persists. Green Bay, as a mid-sized city within Wisconsin, would likely experience similar sectoral pressures affecting the broader state.

Wisconsin's economy relies heavily on manufacturing, particularly in automotive, machinery, and paper products sectors. Green Bay's documented manufacturing layoffs, while modest in the dataset, align with broader state trends in manufacturing employment adjustment. The presence of Georgia Pacific and smaller manufacturers reflects Green Bay's continued specialization in forest products and light manufacturing despite national industry consolidation.

The state's dominant H-1B hiring among technology-sector employers—with Infosys, Capgemini, and Tata Consultancy Services leading petitions—indicates that Wisconsin's high-value employment growth concentrates in technology occupations in Madison and Milwaukee rather than Green Bay. This geographic concentration of H-1B hiring in larger metros potentially accelerates Green Bay's relative economic disadvantage for competing in high-skill, high-wage sectors.

H-1B Hiring and Domestic Labor Market Dynamics

Wisconsin's H-1B petition data reveals 38,169 certified petitions across 4,564 unique employers, with an average salary of $104,606. The top occupations—computer systems analysts (4,446 petitions), computer programmers (2,287 petitions), and software developers (1,987 petitions)—indicate that Wisconsin's foreign worker hiring concentrates in technology roles.

The data does not identify specific H-1B hiring by Green Bay-based employers in the layoff dataset, preventing definitive analysis of whether firms like Alorica hire foreign workers while laying off domestic employees. However, the dominant H-1B employers—Infosys, Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services—operate nationally and likely have limited direct presence in Green Bay. This geographic separation suggests that the apparent contradiction between H-1B hiring and domestic layoffs reflects broader national patterns rather than Green Bay-specific dynamics.

Notably, the average H-1B salary of $104,606 substantially exceeds the wages likely earned by workers laid off from retail, hospitality, and customer service roles. This wage differential indicates that H-1B hiring and domestic layoffs affect different labor market tiers. Wisconsin employers appear to pursue domestic cost reduction in lower-skill roles simultaneously with foreign labor acquisition in higher-skill technology positions—a bifurcated labor market strategy rather than simple substitution.

The Alorica layoff of 157 information-technology-sector workers merits specific attention given that the company operates in customer service outsourcing. Whether this reduction preceded or followed H-1B hiring remains unclear from the dataset, but the combined strategy of laying off customer service workers while potentially using H-1B visas for specialized IT roles would reflect common corporate practice: automating and offshoring customer-facing roles while maintaining specialized technical capacity.

Green Bay's layoff experience reflects the convergence of multiple economic forces: pandemic disruption, retail sector structural decline, manufacturing efficiency optimization, and the secular shift toward service-sector and technology-sector employment. The concentrated impact of a few large employers means that Green Bay's economic resilience depends significantly on sustaining employment at firms like Georgia Pacific, Schneider National, and the YMCA—institutions whose strategic decisions ripple throughout the broader community.