Top image: PayPal headquarters, North First Street, San Jose. Photo: Sagar Savla / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The story of Silicon Valley job cuts is usually told one press release at a time: a tech giant trims a team, an executive memo leaks, a stock moves. The state’s mandatory layoff filings tell it differently, and over the past three and a half months they describe a regional economy whose cuts land as heavily on factory floors as on software campuses.

California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act generally requires employers to give 60 days’ written notice before a mass layoff, plant closure or relocation, according to the Employment Development Department. A tally of those filings by MoneyTrackerDaily, compiled from EDD’s WARN report and last updated Oct. 15, counts 30 notices from 17 employers in Santa Clara County since July 2026, covering 2,280 workers. Four of the filings are closures affecting 612 workers; the rest are layoffs.

The biggest notices

The largest single filing came from Jabil, the contract manufacturer, which reported 382 workers affected at 30 Great Oaks Blvd. in San Jose, listed as a temporary closure effective Nov. 23. Next were Monterey Mushrooms, with 253 permanent layoffs at its Morgan Hill site effective Sept. 20, and PayPal, with 251 permanent layoffs at 2211 N. First St. in San Jose effective Oct. 30.

Behind them is a familiar roster of Valley names. ServiceNow filed two notices at its Santa Clara campus covering 156 workers, including a two-person notice processed Oct. 13, the most recent in the county. Intel filed eight notices covering 155 workers across buildings on its Santa Clara campus, including the Robert Noyce Building, in two waves processed in late July and mid-September. Apple reported 147 layoffs across Cupertino and two Sunnyvale sites effective Oct. 19. Uber filed for 137 workers at two Sunnyvale addresses, Synopsys for 128 in Sunnyvale, Oracle for 99 in Santa Clara and Amazon for 70 in Sunnyvale.

The list reaches well beyond tech. Kellanova, filing as the Eggo Company, reported a temporary closure affecting 112 workers at its San Jose plant. Stanford Health Care filed for 95 layoffs at two Palo Alto addresses. New Leaf Community Markets closed a San Jose store, and Eargo, the hearing-aid maker, closed its San Jose site.

Manufacturing leads

Sorted by industry, manufacturing accounts for 11 notices and 849 affected workers, more than any other sector, followed by professional, scientific and technical services, with 439. Some of that classification reflects how employers file; Apple’s and some of Intel’s notices, for instance, are coded as manufacturing. But the Jabil and Kellanova filings are a reminder that Santa Clara County still hosts a physical production economy, and that it remains exposed.

A few caveats matter. WARN notices capture only layoffs large enough to trigger the law, so the totals undercount job losses. Employers can amend filings, and a “temporary” closure says nothing about how long a site will be dark. Neither the Jabil nor the Kellanova listing gives a public reason. Statewide trackers also show how a single company’s cuts can be spread across counties: one tracker counts six ServiceNow notices covering 424 workers in Santa Clara and San Diego counties.

The long view

The more interesting pattern is the gap between the region’s capital markets and its labor market. Venture funding in the Bay Area is running at historically high levels, concentrated in AI and infrastructure, while the WARN ledger shows steady, incremental trimming at established employers, from semiconductor design to payments to food processing. Capital is pooling at the frontier; jobs are being pared in the middle.

A new state rule may at least make those transitions more visible. Starting in 2026, EDD says, WARN notices must explain how employers will support laid-off workers, including whether they plan to coordinate with the local workforce development board, under Senate Bill 617. For a county whose economic narrative is written by its fastest-growing companies, the notices are a useful counter-text: a public record of who is leaving the payroll and where.

Sources: California Employment Development Department; MoneyTrackerDaily Santa Clara County WARN tracker (data as of Oct. 15, 2026); J. Silverman Law statewide WARN tracker. Worker counts are as reported by employers and may be amended.