South Dakota Layoffs November 2026: WARN Numbers Explained
South Dakota is the quietest corner of the national layoff map right now. The state's imported WARN archive holds 80 notices covering 8,748 reported workers — and in 2026, just four filings covering 87 workers. That is the lowest annual worker total in the archive's history, and no South Dakota layoff is currently scheduled to take effect on a future date.
These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. WARN notices record what employers told state labor agencies they planned to do, and plans can change, shrink, or be cancelled before the effective date.
The 2026 picture: four notices, 87 workers
In the last 365 days, South Dakota's archive contains four eligible official filings reporting 87 affected workers. The newest official notice is dated August 10, 2026 — more than three months ago. Nothing new has been filed since.
That works out to about 22 workers per filing, far below the national average of roughly 95 workers per notice in the current 90-day window (667 notices covering 63,168 reported workers). South Dakota's filings are small, and in 2026 there have been very few of them.
The archive behind these figures is almost entirely direct government records: 79 of the 80 notices come straight from official sources, with one attributed secondary record. Four notices in the full archive have no available worker count, so the 8,748 total excludes them.
A year-by-year look: 2026 is the quietest on record
South Dakota's WARN history is a story of small numbers that got smaller:
- 2026: 4 notices, 87 workers
- 2025: 6 notices, 403 workers
- 2024: 6 notices, 651 workers
- 2023: 5 notices, 612 workers
- 2022: 5 notices, 662 workers
- 2021: 1 notice, 300 workers
- 2020: 7 notices, 804 workers
- 2019: 2 notices, 164 workers
- 2018: 6 notices, 926 workers
Earlier years ranged from 58 workers in 2017 (a single notice) to 977 in 2014 (two notices).
The 2026 total of 87 workers is less than a quarter of 2025's 403, and the lowest annual figure in the entire archive. The 2014 peak of 977 workers shows what a busier South Dakota year looks like; 2026 is nowhere near it.
The number of notices has stayed roughly steady — four to seven a year for most of the last decade — while the worker counts have fallen. That pattern points to smaller employers filing, or smaller cuts at the same employers, rather than a collapse in filing activity itself.
Nothing scheduled: zero future effective dates
South Dakota has zero notices with future effective dates. That means no WARN layoff is currently on the calendar to take effect in the state.
Compare that with the national picture. In the current 90-day window, the upcoming weeks carry 5,477 workers effective the week of November 10, 6,613 the week of November 17, and 9,300 the week of November 24 — the heaviest week on the calendar — followed by 2,593 the week of December 1, 1,337 the week of December 8, and 5,628 the week of December 15. South Dakota contributes none of those workers.
The absence of scheduled layoffs is good news, but it is also a reminder of how the data works: a state with no future effective dates is a state where nothing has been filed recently, not a state where layoffs are impossible. Smaller layoffs that fall below the WARN thresholds — generally 100 or more full-time employees at the employer, and a plant closing affecting 50 or more, or a mass layoff of 500 or more, or 50 to 499 workers who make up at least a third of a site's workforce — never produce a notice at all.
How to read South Dakota's numbers
Three cautions apply before drawing conclusions from a quiet state.
First, coverage is partial. The figures cover imported records from connected sources only. A layoff that was never filed, or filed with a source that is not connected, does not appear. Missing coverage is not zero layoffs.
Second, small numbers are noisy. With only four filings in 2026, a single 100-worker notice would more than double the year's total. A quiet year can turn busy on one filing, and a busy year can look quiet if one large filing falls outside the window.
Third, South Dakota has no broader state mini-WARN law, so the federal thresholds are the ones that matter. Layoffs below those thresholds are invisible in this data by design. The 87 workers counted for 2026 are the reported plans from the largest employers' filings — not a census of every job lost in the state.
South Dakota in the national picture
Nationally, the 90-day window counted 667 notices covering 63,168 reported workers as of November 10, 2026, with 30 notices lacking an available worker count. California leads the ranking with 20,982 reported workers, followed by Washington with 17,411, Illinois with 3,432, Maryland with 2,484, and Virginia with 2,473.
South Dakota's 87 workers in 2026 are a rounding error against that total — about 0.1 percent. But that is the point of a state-by-state view: the national story is dominated by two states, while most states, including South Dakota, are quiet. The WARN data is most useful when it is read locally, where a single filing can matter to a whole town.
Data source: Layoff Atlas
