Week Ahead: November 28 Brings 5,760 Scheduled Layoffs as the Holiday Season Begins
The week of November 28 is the next-to-last stop on the current layoff calendar, and it is a heavy one. WARN filings tracked by Layoff Atlas show 5,760 workers with effective dates falling in that week, making it the fourth-heaviest week in the six-week window now on display. It is also the week Thanksgiving falls in, which makes the timing worth understanding carefully rather than reading as a single headline number.
These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN notice is an advance filing an employer makes about a planned mass layoff or closure. Some plans change, some dates move, and some filings are later withdrawn. The figures below describe what employers have reported so far, not a final count of people who will lose their jobs.
The six weeks at a glance
As of the latest registry update on October 24, 2026, the upcoming effective-date weeks look like this:
- Week of October 24: 2,759 workers
- Week of October 31: 7,437 workers
- Week of November 7: 4,326 workers
- Week of November 14: 8,404 workers
- Week of November 21: 6,925 workers
- Week of November 28: 5,760 workers
Together, the six weeks total 35,611 scheduled workers. The November 28 week alone accounts for about 16 percent of that six-week total, and about 9 percent of the 66,156 workers in the full 90-day notice window.
November 14 remains the heaviest week at 8,404 workers, followed by October 31 at 7,437 and November 21 at 6,925. The calendar does not ease into the holidays: after a quiet week of October 24, every week from October 31 onward carries more than 4,300 scheduled workers.
Why Thanksgiving week needs careful reading
Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, inside the November 28 week bucket. That does not mean 5,760 people are all scheduled to lose their jobs on Thanksgiving Day, or even in that single week in the way a calendar might suggest.
WARN effective dates are grouped here by week, so the November 28 bucket covers filings whose effective dates fall across that week. Some may take effect before the holiday, some after it, and some may be spread across several days. A worker trying to understand their own situation should look at the exact effective date on their own notice, not the week total.
The holiday timing also matters for practical reasons. Benefits offices, career centers, and Rapid Response teams — the state-run teams that help workers after a mass layoff — may run reduced hours around Thanksgiving. Workers with an effective date in this window should not wait until that week to check what help is available, what unemployment claim steps apply in their state, and whether their employer or union has shared a contact for transition support.
The national picture behind the week
The November 28 figure sits inside a larger registry that currently holds 704 notices covering 66,156 reported workers in the 90-day notice window, with 33 notices where no worker count was available. Worker totals exclude those unavailable counts, so the true number of workers named in filings is higher than the headline total.
By state, Washington leads with 17,073 reported workers, followed by California with 14,224, Illinois with 4,626, Texas with 3,652, and Ohio with 3,180. Those five states together account for well over half of the reported workers in the window, which is why national week totals can move sharply when a single large filing lands in one of them.
That concentration is also a warning against reading any single week as a national trend on its own. A week total is the sum of many separate employer decisions, in different states, industries, and circumstances. The pattern that matters more is the run of heavy weeks: four consecutive weeks above 5,700 workers from October 31 through November 28, with no light week in between to break the sequence.
What to watch next
Two things will change the November 28 number before that week arrives. First, new filings can still be added with effective dates in that week, which would push the total up. Second, existing filings can be postponed, extended, or cancelled, which would push it down. Employers that postpone a layoff by less than 60 days must give additional notice as soon as possible, and a postponement of 60 days or more is treated as a new notice altogether, so date changes should leave a paper trail.
Workers and researchers watching this week should check three things: whether the week total moves up or down as new notices arrive, whether any single large filing dominates the week, and whether the filings cluster in a particular state or sector. A week driven by one closure reads very differently from a week built from dozens of smaller filings across the country, even when the totals look similar.
For now, the clearest takeaway is simple. The layoff calendar stays heavy through the end of November, and the Thanksgiving week is no exception. The 5,760 workers scheduled in the week of November 28 are part of a sustained run of heavy weeks, not an isolated spike — and like every figure in this registry, they are reported plans to be checked against the underlying notices, not confirmed job losses.
Data source: Layoff Atlas
