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Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

warnfirehose.com

11–20 of 31 posts

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#11

[dead]

> and there is a documented pattern of employers paying WARN Act penalties retroactively rather than filing -- especially in fast-moving situations where 60 days advance notice is operationally inconvenient.

Oh, I got a solution for that. Don't just go for WARN Act penalties. Go after offenders with the hammer called SEC and market manipulation regulations. That kind of stuff really hurts.

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#13
This dataset looks interesting but the site doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in data integrity.

On the Charts page the selected time range is 12/01/2025 to 02/28/2026 and shows 106,603 employees affected. But the horizontal bar chart with state level data shows numbers in millions. For example, CA has more than 2 million and IL has more than 1.7 million employees affected. Then the layoff map at the bottom shows only layoffs in Texas.

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#14
post #13

This dataset looks interesting but the site doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in data integrity. On the Charts page the selected time range is 12/01/2025 to 02/28/2026 and shows 106,603 employees affected. But the horizontal bar chart with state level data shows numbers in millions. For example, CA has more than 2 million and IL has more than 1.7 million employees affected. Then the layoff map at the bottom shows o…

You can think about LLM-generated UIs/apps the same way you think about LLM-generated responses. It's a bunch of garbage, but if you know what you're looking for, you might find something useful.

This doesn't seem to work at all for stats-related apps/sites though, since you can't judge the accuracy of what's being presented. If the site claims it'll "take you to space," you don't take that literally, you just treat it as another AI artifact. But with numbers, you have no way to tell what's accurate and what's just made up.

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#15
post #13

This dataset looks interesting but the site doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in data integrity. On the Charts page the selected time range is 12/01/2025 to 02/28/2026 and shows 106,603 employees affected. But the horizontal bar chart with state level data shows numbers in millions. For example, CA has more than 2 million and IL has more than 1.7 million employees affected. Then the layoff map at the bottom shows o…

Agreed, this doesn't pass my smell test. November 2026 reports layoffs in NJ (with past tense) https://warnfirehose.com/blog/2026/11/week-1

The layoffs in the report are not listed in NJ's own warn notice https://www.nj.gov/labor/assets/PDFs/WARN/2026_WARN_Notice_A...

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#16

Great site thank you. Just curious, I looked up my company(more than 40k employees across the world including many US states) and it seems like I am not seeing the layoffs that colleagues have experienced. This is probably expected as im probably missing some criteria. Do all layoffs have to have a WARN notice or are there mechanisms/criteria that allow companies to lay people off without filing these noticies?

If the layoff is small enough, it's not triggered.

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#18
post #14
post #13

This dataset looks interesting but the site doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in data integrity. On the Charts page the selected time range is 12/01/2025 to 02/28/2026 and shows 106,603 employees affected. But the horizontal bar chart with state level data shows numbers in millions. For example, CA has more than 2 million and IL has more than 1.7 million employees affected. Then the layoff map at the bottom shows o…

You can think about LLM-generated UIs/apps the same way you think about LLM-generated responses. It's a bunch of garbage, but if you know what you're looking for, you might find something useful. This doesn't seem to work at all for stats-related apps/sites though, since you can't judge the accuracy of what's being presented. If the site claims it'll "take you to space," you don't take that literally, you just treat…

> It's a bunch of garbage, but if you know what you're looking for, you might find something useful.

If you mean an LLM can be a brainstorming and hypothesis machine, and you have prior expertise to evaluate the proposals, then I can see that value. (Maybe that's what you meant, of course.)

But prior expertise is absolutely necessary. Otherwise we make ourselves victims of mis/disnformation. People say the Internet is a cesspool of mis/disinfo, yet nobody thinks it could affect them - we're all too smart, of course (no really, I'm the exception!). [0]

> This doesn't seem to work at all for stats-related apps/sites though, since you can't judge the accuracy of what's being presented.

I don't see the difference. If it's obvious nonsense, in numbers or in text, it's detectable. Everything else, see above.

[0] Research shows that thinking is a big reason people get fooled, and better educated people are easier to fool.

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#19
First of all, nice idea and good execution!

The problem is WARN only fires when companies actually fire people. AI displacement doesn't really work that way, at least not yet. Customer support new hires dropped 65% in eight quarters (https://www.saastr.com/customer-support-hiring-has-fallen-65...).

Those roles just stopped being posted..

Re: Show HN: WARN Firehose – Every US layoff notice in one searchable database

#20

[dead]

This is great insights @vicchenai. I just made it in a whim. I asked Gemini for suggestions and it presented few and I picked this one because there didn't seem to be good players out there. There is layoffdata and warntracker and all but they were built using hand coding :) it probably took them quite long to have it done. This is a challenging thing - 50 states having different data formats and having to poll them daily. Data cleaning is another thing. Historical data is also a thing. Plus all the blogs, reports, data presentation and api endpoints.

If it all can be done in a weekend without having to write a single line manually, sky is the limit no? Anybody having an idea can make these thing happen. I am not expecting it to make any money and it was a learning project but I do see some value for certain people.

Insurance brokers would benefit if they are first to know so they coudl target these layed off people. Recruiters the same and definitely hedge funds, short shellers and quant. Gemini tells me data is the new oil ! I am convinced.

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