US WARN Layoff Notices + Company Watchlist

WARN Act layoff notices from 47 US states and Washington, DC, back to 2005, refreshed every six hours from each state's own published register. About 39,000 notices covering 4.4 million workers.

Four ways to run it:

Mode	What you get
Watchlist	Paste your own list of companies (suppliers, portfolio holdings, sales accounts). For each one: every WARN notice on record in every state, workers affected, notices filed but not yet effective, the next effective date, and other distress signals we hold.
Recent	Notices filed in the last N days, filtered by state, size and industry.
Upcoming	Layoffs that have been filed but have not happened yet, by effective date, up to a year ahead.
Changes	Every new notice, and every notice a state has since amended (effective date moved, headcount changed, layoff reclassified as a closure), since N days ago.

Why the watchlist mode exists

Most people asking "is anyone on my list laying people off?" have the list already. Searching 48 state websites one name at a time is the slow part, and the same employer is filed under different names: "Walmart", "Wal-Mart Associates, Inc." and "Walmart #1258" are one company here. The watchlist mode does the matching across every state at once and returns one row per name you sent, including the names with nothing on record, so you can see what was checked.

Alongside WARN notices, a watchlist row includes other public distress signals where we hold them: SEC 8-K filings that report restructuring or exit costs, PBGC pension plan terminations, and large federal contracts approaching their end date.

Example output (Upcoming mode)

{
  "mode": "upcoming",
  "company": "Example Manufacturing Co.",
  "state": "OH",
  "city": "Dayton",
  "employees": 142,
  "industry": "Manufacturing",
  "type": "Closure",
  "notice_date": "2026-10-09",
  "effective_date": "2026-12-11",
  "url": "https://canarywhistle.com/company/example-manufacturing-co"
}

Notice rows in Recent and Changes mode also carry source_url (the state page the notice was published on), roles, and revisions_url (the notice's full as-filed history).

Input

• What to fetch: watchlist, recent, upcoming or changes.
• Companies: one per line, watchlist mode only. Up to 1,000 a run.
• Days: how far back for recent and changes, how far ahead for upcoming. 1 to 365.
• States: two-letter codes. Empty means all.
• Minimum employees affected: skip smaller notices.
• Industry: healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, logistics, finance, technology, retail and a few others. Most notices name no industry, so empty is usually right.
• Maximum results: stop after this many rows.

Pricing

Pay per result. A notice row (recent, upcoming, changes) is one record event. A watchlist row is one company-checked event, because it summarizes everything on record for that employer. Set a spending limit on the run and the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Scheduling

Run Changes mode daily with Days set to 1 to get only what is new or amended since yesterday. Run Watchlist weekly against your supplier list to catch a notice before its effective date.

What WARN data is and is not

The federal WARN Act requires employers with 100 or more employees to give 60 days' notice of a plant closing or mass layoff, and several states set lower thresholds. So this is the set of layoffs large enough to trigger a notice and filed with a state. It is not every US layoff. States publish on their own schedules, some only post a rolling recent window, and three (New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Wyoming) do not publish usable notices at all. A notice is a statement of intent: dates move and some layoffs are reduced or withdrawn, which is why the Changes mode exists.

Source

Data from CanaryWhistle, which collects and normalizes every state WARN register. Full methodology at canarywhistle.com/methods. For signed webhooks and higher volume, see the CanaryWhistle API.