Working Paper Revision

Advance Layoff Notices and Aggregate Job Loss

Abstract: We collect data from Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notices and establish their usefulness as an indicator of aggregate job loss. The number of workers affected by WARN notices ("WARN layoffs") leads state-level initial unemployment insurance claims, and changes in the unemployment rate and private employment. WARN layoffs move closely with aggregate layoffs from Mass Layoff Statistics and the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, but are timelier and cover a longer sample. In a vector autoregression, changes in WARN layoffs lead unemployment rate changes and job separations. Finally, they improve pseudo real-time forecasts of the unemployment rate. Data associated with this paper are available at openICPSR: https://doi.org/10.3886/E155161

Keywords: WARN Act; mass layoffs; unemployment; dynamic factor models;

JEL Classification: C32; E24; E27; J63; J65;

https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-202003r

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Part of Series: Working Papers

Publication Date: 2022-02-02

Number: 20-03R

Related Works

• Working Paper Revision: Advance Layoff Notices and Aggregate Job Loss