Insights · Layoffs
Groundwork research · Published October 19, 2026 · Data as of June 30, 2026 · 2 min read
Kroger is in the news this month. The state layoff notices give the documented part of the picture. From October 13, 2025 to October 12, 2026, Kroger and the companies it owns filed 19 notices naming at least 3,066 workers.
Kroger files layoff notices under several names. Some carry the Kroger name itself, some come from its warehouse company, and some come from the grocery chains it owns, each filing in its own name. We count all of them together as Kroger, so the totals here cover the whole company.
Together the notices name 3,066 workers. That total is a floor: 1 of the notices lists no headcount, so its workers are missing from the count. The latest notice is dated September 30, 2026, for a site in MI. In the year before, from the same companies, the records hold 3 notices naming 383 workers.
October 13, 2025 to October 12, 2026
a floor
Workers named in Kroger layoff notices, by year
Notices filed by Kroger, its warehouse company and its grocery chains.
The federal WARN Act asks larger employers to give advance written notice of a plant closing or a mass layoff at a site, and several states add rules of their own. A notice records the plan at the time it was filed, with a date and a place. Cuts to office staff that are spread across months or years, or across many sites, can stay below the size that calls for a notice, so the notices can show a different picture from a company's announcements.
Kroger also appears in the Labor Department's H-1B wage filings, the forms an employer files before it sponsors a worker on the visa. Across the months the records cover, it holds 106 certified filings. The largest group is Software Developers, with 55 filings at a median offered wage of $133,784, followed by Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers, with 17 filings at a median of $121,382.
The Wage and Hour Division's enforcement records list 22 cases with violations found at Kroger and the companies it owns, with findings ending between 2005 and 2024. Across those cases the division recorded $7,965,984 in back wages and $75,431 in civil penalties, and the cases name 19,830 employees. The year with the most cases was 2009, with 5.
Investigators recorded child labor findings in 13 of the cases and minimum wage and overtime findings in 11. A case can carry findings under more than one law, so the two counts overlap. A count of cases is a count of records, and a grocer with a workforce this large produces more of them over two decades.
Kroger wage and hour cases, by the year their findings end
The latest 12 of 20 years.
The layoff counts come from a snapshot of state notices through October 12, 2026. A notice filed after that date, or by a company outside the names we count as Kroger, falls outside these figures. The wage records hold cases in which the Wage and Hour Division found violations under the federal laws we track, and the latest one on file has findings ending September 26, 2024. The H-1B figures cover certified filings in the months the records list. The sources below link to each official list.
Wage-and-hour figures are concluded compliance actions in the Wage and Hour Division enforcement database, loaded July 14, 2026. A case counts once, in the year its findings end, and a case that appears under two statutes still counts once.
Layoff figures come from state WARN notices in the WARN Notice Register, current through October 12, 2026. A notice is the advance filing an employer with roughly 100 or more employees sends to a state agency before a layoff or closure. A notice that lists no headcount adds no workers to a total, so a worker total is a floor.
Hiring figures count certified H-1B wage filings (labor condition applications) in DOL's disclosure data, covering 15 months of DOL decisions (Jul–Sep 2024, Jul–Sep 2025, Oct 2025–Jun 2026). A filing is an employer's certified wage offer for a job, and a bigger employer files more.
The records cover cases DOL concluded and notices employers filed, and each figure describes what was recorded in them.
Layoff figures: how to read layoff notice data, what the notices can and cannot say and why some are missing.
Sources: DOL Open Data Portal, Wage and Hour Division enforcement data; WARN Notice Register; DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification, LCA disclosure data.
Informational only; not legal, immigration, or financial advice.
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Wage data: U.S. Department of Labor OFLC LCA Disclosure Data and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS. LCA filings reflect sponsored-worker wage offers, which skew toward mid-large employers and specific occupations — treat any estimate built from a small sample cautiously. Informational only; not legal, immigration, or financial advice.