North Dakota Layoffs November 2026: WARN Numbers Explained

North Dakota is the quietest state in the Layoff Atlas WARN archive. So far in 2026, the state has recorded exactly one WARN notice, covering 47 workers. No North Dakota filing has a future effective date, which means nothing is currently scheduled to take effect in the weeks ahead.

That quiet is itself the story. Nationally, the 90-day WARN window holds 694 notices covering 64,044 reported workers, led by California (21,514 workers) and Washington (17,411). North Dakota sits at the opposite end of the scale — and understanding why says as much about how WARN works as it does about the state's economy.

The 2026 picture so far

North Dakota's single 2026 filing came from Noridian Healthcare Solutions, with 47 workers affected. The notice was filed on January 15, 2026, with an effective date of January 28, 2026 — a 13-day gap between notice and effect.

That short gap is worth noting. The federal WARN Act generally requires 60 days' notice for qualifying mass layoffs and plant closures, but it only applies to employers with 100 or more full-time workers, and only when the layoff meets the law's size thresholds. A 47-worker filing at a smaller employer can fall outside the federal requirement entirely, which is one reason some notices show much shorter timelines.

North Dakota has no state mini-WARN law adding broader coverage, so the federal thresholds are the only notice requirement in play. Smaller layoffs in the state simply never generate a WARN filing, and never appear in this data.

A small archive with a loud 2020

The full imported archive for North Dakota holds 53 non-cancelled WARN notices reporting 4,968 workers affected, of which 51 are direct government records and 2 are attributed secondary reports. Four notices in the archive have unavailable worker counts, so the true total is slightly higher than the reported figure.

The year-by-year history shows how uneven the state's filings are:

  • 2026: 1 notice, 47 workers
  • 2025: 4 notices, 238 workers
  • 2024: 3 notices, 5 workers
  • 2023: 5 notices, 105 workers
  • 2022: 2 notices, 670 workers
  • 2020: 15 notices, 1,560 workers
  • 2019: 1 notice, 95 workers
  • 2018: 2 notices, 165 workers
  • 2017: 4 notices, 887 workers
  • 2016: 10 notices, 875 workers
  • 2015: 6 notices, 321 workers

Two things stand out. First, 2020 dominates the archive: 15 notices and 1,560 workers, nearly a third of all workers ever reported in the state's filings, concentrated in the pandemic spring. Second, 2024's three notices reported only 5 workers between them, because two of the three filings had unavailable worker counts — a reminder that the reported totals are a floor, not a complete count.

The 2022 figure is also shaped by a single large filing: a 670-worker Watsonville Community Hospital record that appears in the North Dakota archive as a secondary record, even though the facility is in California. Grouped company names and secondary records do not establish where the affected workers were, so single-filing spikes in a small state deserve a second look.

The largest recent filings

Beyond the single 2026 notice, the most recent North Dakota filings are all from 2025:

  • Transdev Services, Fargo — 112 workers, effective December 21, 2025 (notice October 21, 2025)
  • Hess, Minot — 111 workers, effective date unavailable (notice July 21, 2025)
  • Accelerate360 Distribution — 10 workers, effective June 28, 2025 (notice April 25, 2025)
  • ProFrac, Dickinson — 5 workers, effective May 2, 2025 (notice March 3, 2025)

What the quiet numbers mean

A state with one WARN filing in ten months is not necessarily a state with no layoffs. Three caveats matter:

  1. WARN is a threshold law, not a census. Employers below 100 full-time workers, and layoffs below the law's size thresholds, never trigger a filing. In a state of North Dakota's size, much of the economy sits below those lines.
  2. Coverage is partial. The archive covers imported records from connected sources only. Missing source coverage is not zero layoffs.
  3. These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A notice describes an employer's stated plan at the time of filing. Plans change, workers are reassigned, and some notices are withdrawn.

The practical read is narrower: no large employer in North Dakota has announced a qualifying mass layoff or closure in 2026, and nothing is scheduled to take effect in the coming weeks. The state's last two large filings both landed in the second half of 2025, and the 2026 calendar has been silent since January.

The national context

The national WARN calendar is considerably busier. The six weeks ahead show 6,473 workers scheduled for the week of November 9, 6,202 for November 16, 6,207 for November 23, 5,916 for November 30, 898 for December 7, and 6,274 for December 14. Illinois (3,432 workers), Texas (2,750), and Maryland (2,475) round out the top five states behind California and Washington.

North Dakota's absence from that calendar is the exception, not the rule — most states have at least some scheduled activity. For workers in the state, the numbers offer a calm snapshot, with the usual warning that WARN data captures only the largest, most formal layoff announcements.

Data source: Layoff Atlas. Figures from the North Dakota state page, source check November 8, 2026.