Layoff Trend Continues: NJ WARN Notices Highest in Four Years

NJDOL released another update to its WARN archive today, which tracks layoff notices.

Through May, 2026 is already running higher than the same five-month period in 2025, 2024 and 2023 in both the number of notices and the number of workers listed as potentially affected.

The latest update included June-posted notices involving Merck in Rahway and several Optum-related entities in Somerset, Rutherford and Basking Ridge.

Again, this doesn’t prove every listed layoff happened or is definitely going to happen, but it shows that New Jersey’s 2026 WARN trend is continuing, with major employers on the radar.

As we’ve been reporting, NJ’s recovery has been a mixed bag and still lags behind the rest of the nation in payroll growth and has a higher rate of unemployment than the US as a whole.

NJDOL 2026 WARN Notices
https://www.nj.gov/labor/assets/PDFs/WARN/2026_WARN_Notice_Archive.pdf

NJDOL 2025 WARN Notices
https://www.nj.gov/labor/assets/PDFs/WARN/2025_WARN_Notice_Archive.pdf

NJDOL 2024 WARN Notices
https://www.nj.gov/labor/assets/PDFs/WARN/2024_WARN_Notice_Archive.pdf

NJDOL 2023 WARN Notices
https://www.nj.gov/labor/assets/PDFs/WARN/2023_WARN_Notice_Archive.pdf

NJDOL April 2026 NJ employment report
https://www.nj.gov/labor/lwdhome/press/2026/20260521_jobs.shtml

BLS April 2026 national Employment Situation release
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

BLS Employment Situation
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf