These Charlotte industries have laid off the most workers this year
As the U.S. economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, workers around the country are still being laid off from their jobs.
This year, more than 1,500 workers in North Carolina have been laid off, including 270 in the Charlotte area, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Report for 2022 from the N.C. Department of Commerce.
Under federal law, employers are required to file WARN notices when they make mass layoffs or close plants.
Here are the industries that have made the most layoffs in the Charlotte area.
Mortgage lenders
Rising mortgage rates after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a drop in new loan applications, forcing lenders to make cuts to their staff.
In late May, Nashville-based FirstBank told the N.C. Department of Commerce it planned to lay off about 74 workers in Charlotte. The layoffs included more than 20 roles in mortgage underwriting, processing, sales and other areas, according to the WARN notice.
Two weeks later, Wyndham Capital Mortgage notified the N.C. Department of Commerce it was laying off 48 employees at its local headquarters near Southpark, according to a notice filed with the department. The layoffs will begin Aug. 1, according to the documents.
Other lenders in the Charlotte area have made cuts this year, including Wells Fargo, which laid off an undisclosed number of employees in its home lending business in April due to market conditions, and Movement Mortgage, a lender based near Charlotte in Indian Land, S.C., which laid off about 170 employees this spring, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Manufacturing companies
Nearly 150 Charlotte area manufacturing workers have been laid off this year, documents show.
Wisconsin-based food safety and manufacturing company Packers Sanitation Services Inc. recently notified the N.C. Department of Commerce it was laying off 72 employees at its plant in Monroe, according to the WARN notice.
The news came three years after PSSI, which employs 17,000 people nationwide, laid off 122 workers at the plant, Harrison Miller wrote for BusinessNC.
In June, Glenmark, a pharmaceutical company based in India, announced the layoffs of 76 employees at its Monroe plant, the WARN notice says. The layoffs will begin on Aug. 1.
Layoffs at the company could be attributed to a voluntary recall of three lots of drugs due to deviations from the Current Good Manufacturing Practice regulations and a decrease in revenue on a year-over-year basis for U.S. operations, Jason Parker wrote for WRAL TechWire.
Observer staff writer Hannah Lang contributed to this report.
