Advance layoff notices and aggregate job loss

Abstract

SummaryWe 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 unemployment rate (UR) and private employment changes. WARN layoffs comove 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 UR changes and job separations. Finally, they improve pseudo real‐time forecasts of the UR and private employment changes.