A year later, in early 2025, Allied Aviation Services, a major jet fuel operator, issued its own notice, blaming an "unforeseen and unsuspected" contract termination at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport for the layoffs of 362 local employees. In December, after a major client pulled the plug on its Coppell logistics service, FedEx told state authorities it was closing the operation and laying off 865.
The first three months of 2026 also saw some notable local layoff announcements, including from Albertson's, the Stockyards Hotel and Comerica. But overall, North Texas employers issued fewer layoffs in the first quarter of 2026 than they had during any quarter since the summer of 2024, according to a review of more than two years' of Texas WARN data by The Dallas Morning News.
The review, which tallied mandatory layoff announcements from the 11 North Texas counties that constitute the Census' D-FW metro area designation, does not amount to a comprehensive count of all local job losses. Under the federal WARN Act, only employers with 100 or more employees are subject to the notification requirements, and those employers must issue the layoff notifications only under certain qualifying events, including a plant closure that impacts at least 50 workers or a mass layoff.
But the drop in this year's WARN notices still amounts to a notable trendline for the North Texas economy — the number of impacted employees in the first quarter of 2026 was less than half the number impacted in the fourth quarter of 2025, the review found, and less than one third the number impacted a year earlier, in the first quarter of 2025.
The layoff drop comes as job gains in North Texas have also recently dried out — suggesting that the long-booming metro region is falling in line with a larger national trend.
"The broader context is that the U.S. economy is in this 'low-hire, low-fire' period," Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, said in an interview.
And while a stagnant employment picture is certainly better than a shrinking one, for Texas and D-FW — both of which have seen explosive jobs gains in recent years — the flattening amounts to a significant downshift.
"A lot of parts of the country would be happy to have the relative stability in the workforce that we've had in Texas in the last year," Adams said. "But this, relative to our recent history, is a slowdown."
'Zero Growth? That Was Like, 'Wow''
That Lone Star slowdown became particularly evident in recent months, once the impacts of many Trump administration policies came into clearer view. According to BLS data released in February, last year the number of nonfarm jobs in the state rose by 0.1%, with significant net gains coming only from Texas' healthcare and construction sectors.
It was a growth rate that actually matched the U.S. rate, which itself was unusual — for years the famously hot Texas economy, which added jobs at a rate of 1.6% in 2024 and above 2% in 2023, has easily outpaced the national economy — with analysts largely attributing the state's near frozen jobs growth to the negative economic impact from tariffs, the federal immigration crackdown and broader uncertainty.
"It is a big deal for Texas," Luis Torres, a senior economist at the Dallas Fed, said earlier this year.
In over a decade of analyzing and discussing the Texas economy, Torres added, it was the first time he'd ever spoken of this kind of flat-lining trend.
"I never said 'zero growth,' " he said. "Maybe after the oil bust in 2015, maybe slow growth, right? But just saying 'zero growth'? That was like, 'wow.'"
Yet even as job gains flattened, the state's overall economic picture was more tepid than dire. Last year, Texas still managed modest GDP growth, which analysts have attributed in large part to businesses' adoption of AI. And unemployment has remained essentially stable. At the end of 2025, Texas had a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 4.3%, according to data from the Dallas Fed, not far off from the 4.1% rate at the end of 2024. Dallas-Plano-Irving recorded a rate of 4.1%, up from 3.9%, and Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine recorded a rate of 4.0%, up from 3.8%.
Torres had a pithy explanation. "It's a low-hiring, low-firing environment," he said.
But this year, job cuts statewide and in North Texas appear to have dipped even more. In the first quarter of 2026, employers across Texas issued WARN notices impacting 5,652 employees. In the last quarter of 2025, that figure was 6,684, and in the first quarter of 2025, it was 7,606.
In North Texas, which represents about a quarter of Texas workers, the figure was 1,093 employees. The largest tranche came from Ashley Furniture, which filed paperwork in March outlining its decision to cut 266 jobs as it moved to end its manufacturing operations at a facility in Mesquite. In late February, the Stockyards Hotel in Fort Worth — a historic location that reportedly once hosted the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and was planning a major renovation — filed a notice impacting 120 workers.
In January — the day after shareholders approved a nearly $11 billion agreement with Fifth Third — Dallas-based Comerica issued a notice affecting 184 employees at its campus at the Frisco Star Tower. A few weeks later, the bank issued a notice impacting dozens more at the same location.
"Both companies are thoughtfully aligning roles to support future business needs," Comerica said in a statement in January, "and while these decisions are never easy, they are necessary to position the combined organization for sustainable growth."
'It Makes Sense That Layoffs Are Low'
Other D-FW-area notices came from the grocery chain Albertson's, the education technology company Bluum USA, the bankrupt auto parts conglomerate First Brands Group, the medical equipment manufacturer Fresenius USA, the global food services giant Sodexo and Congo, a Kentucky-based company that develops influencer-led brands.
But while those notices certainly represented economic pain for a diverse array of local workers, the total number of North Texas employees impacted — just under 1,100 — was lower than during almost any quarter since the beginning of 2024, the time period The News included in its review.
For the previous quarter, the last three months of 2025, the number was 2,697, with significant layoff announcements from FedEx, the Sheraton Arlington and the call center operator Telvista, among others.
In the first quarter of 2025 the total was 3,744 workers, with notices from employers that included the pet food company Chewy and the national nonprofit Catholic Charities — which laid off refugee settlement workers after the Trump administration froze funding to the group . A year earlier, in the first quarter of 2024, it was 1,810. (The only quarter in the timeframe that saw fewer layoffs than Q1 of 2026 was Q3 of 2024, when North Texas employers issued notices impacting 883 workers, according to the The News' tally.)
Part of the explanation for D-FW's apparent layoff slowdown, said Adams, likely comes from companies' relative optimism heading into the year: After a whirlwind 2025, analysts and executives were more bullish about 2026, thanks in part to expected boosts from last year's Federal Reserve interest rate cuts and "Big Beautiful Bill" tax cuts.
"Businesses were planning for economic growth," said Adams, "and so in that context it makes sense that layoffs are low."
Yet even as employers are mostly steering clear of job cuts, they also generally aren't in a hiring mood. That's partly because in recent years hiring was robust, so many businesses were already well-staffed: From 2022 through 2024, according to Dallas Fed data, the Dallas and Fort Worth metro areas both added jobs at an average year-over-year pace of near 3%. Last year, the rate was less than 1% for both metro areas, although Dallas did see an apparent jump in January, before the war in Iran injected new uncertainty.
At the same time, Adams said, many companies have also tweaked their approach to growth: "The strategy more recently," he said, "has been to look to make their workforces more productive rather than to add workers to get more done."
Lower immigration, analysts point out, is also reducing the labor supply — nationally and especially in Texas — which has helped keep unemployment relatively stable even amid a broader climate of stagnation: Last month, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said that after accounting for revisions the American private sector had seen "effectively ... zero net job creation" over the previous six months.
The takeaway is that the "low-hire, low-fire" economy could be sticking around for a while. It's an environment that may be OK for most employees, economists point out, but leads to major challenges for those attempting to break into or rejoin the workforce, like new college graduates or the long-term unemployed. The stagnation can also lead businesses to generally be more cautious, ultimately hindering innovation and growth.
Still, the diversity and strong fundamentals — including the relative affordability — of the North Texas economy means the region is relatively well-positioned to weather it, said Dean Stansel, a professor at SMU's Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom.
"Compared to other large metro areas, like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco — the costs are just a lot higher there for businesses, and a lot of them have made the choice to leave," he said. "And one of the places they're coming is here."
©2026 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
