---
pretty_name: What changed in US WARN Act layoff notices (daily observed change log, amendments and disappearances)
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
  - en
task_categories:
  - tabular-classification
tags:
  - warn-act
  - layoffs
  - layoff-notices
  - amendments
  - revisions
  - change-log
  - point-in-time
  - data-provenance
  - time-series
  - public-records
  - government-data
  - daily-updated
  - labor
  - labor-market
  - united-states
size_categories:
  - n<1K
configs:
  - config_name: changes
    data_files: data/warn_notice_changes.csv
    default: true
  - config_name: suppressed_snapshot_pairs
    data_files: data/suppressed_snapshot_pairs.csv
---

# What changed in US WARN Act layoff notices

**617 observed changes** across **18 daily builds**
(2026-08-30 to 2026-09-16), touching
**411 distinct notices** in the
[daily US WARN Act dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/APProjects/us-warn-act-layoffs-notices-daily).

This is the answer to a question no state labor department will answer for you:
**what did the layoff filing say before it said this?** State WARN portals
publish a page. When a notice is amended, re-filed or pulled, the page simply
changes - there is no history, no diff, no archive. This dataset is that diff,
taken every single day.

## Read this before you use a single row

A difference between two of our daily builds has **two possible causes**, and we
usually cannot tell which one it was:

1. the state agency amended, re-filed or removed the notice, or
2. **our own parser or normalizer got better** and now reads the same source
   differently.

We do not guess. The `cause_class` column labels only what is mechanically
decidable, and every headline number below is computed from `value_changed`
rows only.

**`change_type=row_absent` means the row stopped appearing in our build. It does
not mean the employer withdrew the notice.** A state re-organising its portal,
a paginated page timing out, or a filing ageing out of a source's own window all
produce a `row_absent` row.

**Workers whose headcount was substantively revised: 0.** An earlier
build of this pipeline was about to publish a four-figure "workers revised"
total; inspection showed every one of those events was an empty field being
populated for the first time, not a number being changed. That is why the
number here is computed from `value_changed` rows alone.

## Columns

| column | meaning |
|---|---|
| `observed_date` | the build in which the change was first seen |
| `prev_observed_date` | the build it is being compared against |
| `id` | stable notice id, joins to the [main dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/APProjects/us-warn-act-layoffs-notices-daily) |
| `state` | two-letter state posting the notice |
| `company` | employer as filed at `observed_date` |
| `notice_date` | date on the filing |
| `change_type` | `amended` (a field differs) or `row_absent` (row gone from our build) |
| `cause_class` | `value_changed`, `field_populated`, `field_cleared`, `format_only`, `unknown` |
| `field` | which column changed (blank for `row_absent`) |
| `old_value` / `new_value` | the two values, as printed |

## What is in here right now

| change_type | rows |
|---|---|
| amended | 348 |
| row_absent | 269 |

| cause_class | rows |
|---|---|
| value_changed | 152 |
| format_only | 24 |
| field_populated | 172 |
| field_cleared | 0 |
| unknown | 269 |

Fields that were amended:

| field | times |
|---|---|
| `location` | 126 |
| `notice_type` | 84 |
| `employees_affected` | 64 |
| `effective_date` | 41 |
| `company` | 30 |
| `notice_date` | 3 |

## The suppression ledger (5 day-pairs)

Our own coverage window has widened several times (adding states, and opening
the free window from 2024+ back to 1988). On a day when the row count swings
more than ~5%, treating every missing row as a disappearance would manufacture
tens of thousands of fake withdrawals. On those day-pairs we **suppress**
disappearances and publish the pair in `suppressed_snapshot_pairs.csv` instead,
so the gap is visible rather than silent. Amendments are still published for
those days.

## Why this cannot be copied

Anyone can re-scrape 48 state portals and match our current table within a week.
Nobody can reconstruct what those portals said last Tuesday. This file starts at
2026-08-30, grows by one build every day, and cannot be backfilled by
us or by anyone else. Every day it is not captured is lost permanently.

## Freshness

Rebuilt daily by an automated pipeline (`gen_revisions.py`) straight from the
git history of the free dataset's `data/warn_notices.csv`. Latest build in this
copy: 2026-09-16.

## Related

- [Daily US WARN Act notices](https://huggingface.co/datasets/APProjects/us-warn-act-layoffs-notices-daily) - every notice, 48 states, free, no login.
- [Multi-state employers](https://huggingface.co/datasets/APProjects/us-multi-state-employer-layoffs-warn-notices-by-state) - who is laying off in more than one state.
- [Notice-period dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/APProjects/us-warn-act-layoff-notice-period-days) - how many days' notice each filing gave.
- [Free CSV/JSON/RSS on GitHub](https://github.com/APVentureEngine/warn-act-notices) - CC BY 4.0.
- [The site](https://approjects-warn-act-notices.static.hf.space) - state pages, employer pages, live search.
- [WARN Watch](https://approj.gumroad.com/l/warn-watch) - same-day alert when an employer on your list files, $49/year.

## License

CC BY 4.0. Underlying notices are US state public records. Attribution:
"WARN Feed, https://approjects-warn-act-notices.static.hf.space".

*Not affiliated with the US Department of Labor or any state agency.*