Layoff Tracker

Methodology

Layoff Tracker counts layoffs from public records and reporting. It never estimates numbers that no source has stated. Every figure on the site links to the sources it came from.

Sources

Official sources are SEC 8-K filings under Item 2.05 (exit or disposal activities), state WARN notices (California, Maryland, Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Washington), Japan's TDnet disclosures and India's NSE announcements. News comes from Google News in 43 country editions (the ~40 largest economies), searched with layoff wording in each local language (Stellenabbau, licenciements, despidos, demissões, esuberi, ontslagen, 希望退職, 裁员, 구조조정, छंटनी, PHK and more). Hacker News and r/layoffs are weak signals. X and LinkedIn are not used: their APIs are paid or prohibit this use.

Languages

Headlines in other languages are parsed with the same rules as English ones: a local layoff word, a company, and a number next to a local job noun ("1.200 Stellen", "1 200 postes", "3 mil empleos", "2万人"). Rumour wording in each language marks a report as speculative. Where an outlet is in one country and the headline names no country, the company is placed in the outlet's country.

In Japan, firms cut staff through voluntary-retirement programs (希望退職), because dismissals are tightly restricted. A program with a stated target or a reported number of leavers counts as a layoff there. The size of the eligible pool ("open to 60,000 staff") never counts.

Names and duplicates

Products, studios, units and executives often appear in headlines instead of the employer ("Ghost of Yōtei developer Sucker Punch", "Microsoft's Xbox"). When most of a name's headlines also name a bigger, overlapping story right next to it, both are merged under the employer.

From reports to events

Each headline is parsed for a company, a headcount or percentage, and a date. Lists, opinion pieces, buyout offers and denials are discarded. Reports about the same company within two weeks of each other form one event. Later coverage that repeats an earlier figure, or revises it on the same scale, is folded into the original event instead of being counted twice. Numbers that describe a past total ("over the past year") are not counted.

Announced plans

A multi-year target ("35,000 jobs by 2030", "over the next five years") is shown as an announced plan with its deadline, but it is left out of the live counter and the yearly total (8 plans, 78,046 jobs in the last 3 months). We do not spread a plan over its years: companies rarely say how fast it will happen, and much of it is often done through attrition. When a round of the plan happens and is reported (a WARN notice, a plant closure, "cuts 1,000 jobs this week"), that round is counted.

Consensus number

The event's number is the weighted median of the firm claims. Filings outrank news, and news outranks rumour. Figures far from the median are ignored. When sources disagree, the page shows the range (for example, "sources say 4,000–15,000"). WARN notices are only a floor: they cover one state, so they never lower a company-wide figure. Figures above 50,000 need at least three independent publishers, including a major outlet. Rumoured or hypothetical figures never set the number; once a layoff is confirmed, earlier rumour coverage joins that event.

Share of staff

When sources state a percentage, we show it. Otherwise, for large companies, we divide the headcount by the employee total from the company's latest annual report (10-K, 20-F or the company's own annual report, linked in the table source) and mark it with ≈. Where the employee total is unknown, we show the count only.

The live counter

Between hourly data updates, the counter on the front page climbs at the average pace of the last 30 days. It is an estimate, labelled as one, and resets to the verified total on every update.

Confidence

Each source has a weight: official record 1.0, major outlet 0.7, other news 0.45, Hacker News 0.25, Reddit 0.15. Speculative wording ("reportedly", "may", "could", "sources say") cuts a source's weight by 40%. Confidence = 1 − ∏(1 − weight) over independent publishers.

Anything weaker is not shown. Single-source stories and social posts on their own never appear, and 8-K restructuring filings that don't mention people are left out. In the last 3 months, 316 shown events have no stated headcount. They count as events but add nothing to the totals.

Known limits

Data: data.json holds every shown event with its sources. Map places: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) and OpenStreetMap Nominatim; land outlines: Natural Earth via world-atlas.