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Advance Layoff Notice Data from the WARN Act

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Pawel Krolikowski, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Kurt Lunsford, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Version: View help for Version V68

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Archived_Vintages			01/25/2022 01:26:PM
WARNFiles_20241031.zip	application/zip	92.8 KB	10/31/2024 08:19:AM

Project Citation:

Krolikowski, Pawel, and Lunsford, Kurt. Advance Layoff Notice Data from the WARN Act. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-10-31. https://doi.org/10.3886/E155161V68

Project Description

Summary: We collect novel and timely data from advance layoff notices filed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The act requires larger employers to notify affected workers at least 60 days before a potential mass layoff. We assemble WARN data from across the United States, and for many large states our data begin in the 1990s. We aggregate these data into an unbalanced, monthly panel of the state-level number of workers affected by WARN notices, and we update this panel twice a month. We also aggregate this panel to a national-level indicator of job loss (the "WARN factor") using a dynamic factor model.

Data Collection

We update the data twice a month by collecting WARN notices from state websites. For many states, we have extended our historical data by using digital archives of the internet and contacting state officials.

Citation
To learn more about the data and the dynamic factor model, see:
Krolikowski, Pawel M. and Kurt G. Lunsford. 2022. “Advance Layoff Notices and Aggregate Job Loss.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 20-03R. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-202003R.
Krolikowski, Pawel M., and Kurt G. Lunsford. 2024 “Advance Layoff Notices and Aggregate Job Loss.” Journal of Applied Econometrics. https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.3032.

File Description
The file labelled WARNFiles_YYYYMMDD.zip in the main directory contains our most recent data. All data included in this zip file were collected as of the date listed in the file name. Previous vintages of our data appear in the `Archived_Vintages’ folder, with the same naming convention.

The zip files contain three files:

1. README.txt
2. WARNData_NSA_YYYYMMDD.csv

This .csv contains the number of workers affected by WARN notices by state and month. These data are not seasonally adjusted. These data are the input into the dynamic factor model.

3. WARNFactors_YYYYMMDD.csv

This .csv contains the output of the dynamic factor model. The output is labeled as follows:

WARN Factor: the estimates of the factor from the dynamic factor model.
MSE: the estimated mean squared errors of the WARN factor.
WARN_hat: the number of workers affected by WARN notices as implied by the WARN factor.
WARN_sum: the sum of the number of workers affected by WARN notices from several states that form a balanced panel beginning in January 2006. These states can change every update.

Disclaimer
These data are updated by the authors and are not an official product of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: mass layoffs; plant closings; unemployment; initial UI claims; dynamic factor model; WARN Act

Geographic Coverage: United States

Methodology

Geographic Unit: State

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This material is distributed exactly as it arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.