California layoffs / Best Buy

Best Buy California Layoffs 2026: What Employees Should Know

Best Buy has 2 layoff notices on file with California's Employment Development Department (EDD) under the state's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, covering 106 jobs in San Diego County, Santa Clara County. That is what the state has published since July 2025, not an all-time total. If you were one of them, here is what the filing says, how much notice the law asks for, and what to look at before you sign anything.

What the filing says

These are the details as Best Buy reported them to the state. The EDD publishes every notice, and this page reflects the data as of Aug 6, 2026.

Location	County	Notice given	Jobs end	Workers	Type
San Diego	San Diego County	Jan 16, 2026	Mar 17, 2026	46	Closure Permanent
San Jose	Santa Clara County	Jan 16, 2026	Mar 17, 2026	60	Closure Permanent

How much notice the law requires

California's WARN Act requires 60 days of advance written notice before a covered mass layoff, and its only statutory exception is a physical calamity or an act of war — far narrower than federal law's three. Who is covered and how the thresholds are counted is in our California WARN Act guide.

What this filing shows

The shortest gap in these filings is 60 calendar days between the notice date and the date the jobs end. That is at or above the 60 days the statute describes.

In dates: counting 60 days back from the Mar 17, 2026 last day of work lands on Jan 16, 2026, and that notice is dated Jan 16, 2026.

This is a fact drawn from the public filing, not a conclusion that anyone broke the law. The date an employer records is not always the date workers were told, employers of different sizes are covered differently, and exceptions can apply. Whether it means anything in your case is exactly what a free consultation sorts out.

Best Buy severance: what to check before you sign

A severance offer is not the notice pay the WARN Act describes, and an employer cannot use one to satisfy the other — and a release may give up more than you expect. What to check before you decide is in our full guide to the California WARN Act.

Two things worth doing this week either way. File for unemployment now — WARN money does not reduce it, and the filings here run through Mar 17, 2026, so you do not have to wait for your last day. And keep every document, including the notice itself and anything showing when it arrived.

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What your notice was required to include

Timing is only half of what Labor Code section 1401 asks for. The notice itself has to contain specific things, and California added most of this list for notices issued on or after January 1, 2026. Every notice on this page falls after that date. If you kept your copy, read it against the full six-item checklist in our WARN Act guide — everything federal law requires, whether transition help is being coordinated, working contact details for your workforce board and for the employer itself, and CalFresh information.

Source: Labor Code section 1401, as amended by SB 617, effective January 1, 2026. A notice missing something from that list is not automatically a violation with a remedy attached — whether a gap matters depends on the employer, the action, and what else happened.

Questions people are asking

What is the Best Buy severance package?

The WARN notice Best Buy filed with the state does not list severance terms, and we do not publish any employer's package. A WARN notice reports how many jobs end, where, and when. Severance is a separate contract offered at the employer's discretion. California law does not require it, and an employer cannot use contractual severance to satisfy what the WARN Act requires, so being offered a package does not by itself answer whether notice pay is also owed. If you have an offer in hand, the terms in front of you are the ones that matter, and they are worth reading closely before the deadline on them runs.

Am I owed severance from Best Buy?

California law does not require severance on its own, and a severance offer is a separate thing from WARN pay. An employer cannot use contractual severance to satisfy its WARN obligation, so being offered a package does not answer whether notice pay is also owed.

Does taking the severance reduce what I could recover?

It depends on why the money is being paid. Severance the employer was already obligated to provide — under a contract, a policy, a benefit plan, or a union agreement — cannot be set against what the WARN Act requires. A payment that is genuinely voluntary and unconditional, one the employer had no legal obligation to make, can reduce that liability. Wages for work you actually performed during the notice period are not voluntary severance at all. Which category Best Buy's offer falls into is a question about the document in front of you, not about the layoff, and it is one of the better reasons to have the paperwork read before the deadline on it runs.

Does it matter that this was filed as a closure?

It can. California's WARN Act covers a closure, a mass layoff, and a relocation, and the thresholds are not identical. A closure means the site itself is shutting down rather than shedding part of its staff, which can change who is counted and whether the statute applies at all. It also tends to mean there is no role to be recalled to.

What if I did not get 60 days of notice?

California's WARN Act requires 60 days of advance written notice before a covered mass layoff, and its only statutory exception is a physical calamity or an act of war. That is far narrower than federal law, which has three exceptions. The shortest gap in these filings is 60 days, at or above the 60 the statute describes. Notice can still fall short in practice if it did not reach you when the filing says, or if it lacked what the statute requires it to contain.

Can I still collect unemployment?

Yes. Under Labor Code section 1407, WARN-related payments are not treated as wages for unemployment purposes, so they cannot be used to deny or reduce your benefits in California. You do not have to wait for your last day — the filings here run through Mar 17, 2026 — and filing early is generally better than filing late.

Does taking a new job hurt my claim?

No. Wages you earn at a new job during the notice period do not reduce what Best Buy may owe under WARN. That holds even if you start before Mar 17, 2026, the last day of work in these filings. You do not need to delay a job search to protect a claim.

How long do I have to act?

Generally three years. The federal WARN Act sets no limitations period of its own, so courts borrow the closest state deadline, which in California is the three-year period for a liability created by statute. The clock starts when you suffer an employment loss, not when the notice went out. Measured from the last day of work in these filings, Mar 17, 2026, three years runs to about Mar 17, 2029. If this was a layoff rather than an outright termination, the loss may not count until the layoff has lasted more than six months, which can start the clock later still. Treat all of it as an outer edge rather than a plan. Other claims arising from the same layoff run much shorter, and a severance offer usually carries its own deadline measured in days.

What has been reported

Press coverage of this layoff, summarized and attributed. This is reporting rather than the filing itself, and we did not independently verify it.

The San Jose filing covers Best Buy's Santana Row store at 3090 Stevens Creek Boulevard. Hoodline reported the store is closing after a roughly 23-year run as a big-box anchor at the shopping center, with about 60 employees affected, citing the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

The San Jose Blog reported the store is departing as its lease expired, and that a Life Time luxury fitness club is lined up to take over the 52,000-square-foot space.

Details worth knowing

Best Buy plans to assist affected Santana Row workers by offering positions at nearby San Jose stores, according to The San Jose Blog.

Sources: Hoodline (opens in a new tab)The San Jose Blog (opens in a new tab)

What the numbers show

The filings name 2 locations: San Diego and San Jose.
They cover 2 separate addresses rather than a single site, so co-workers at different locations may have received different dates.
Every notice is filed as a closure rather than a partial reduction, meaning the sites themselves are shutting down.
The shortest gap between notice and last day here is 60 days, close to the statewide median of 61 days across every notice on file.
By headcount it sits in the top 40% of the 601 employer layoffs tracked here.
The 106 workers leaving Best Buy re-enter a job market where Santa Clara County unemployment stood at 4% in June 2026, below the 5.2% statewide rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted).
All 2 notices are dated within a single month, January 2026, which reads as one event reported site by site rather than a rolling reduction.

These are counts and comparisons drawn from the published filings, not findings about Best Buy.

Free job-search help near the affected sites

America's Job Center of California is the state's no-cost network for laid-off workers: help filing and keeping unemployment benefits, federally funded retraining, and résumé and interview coaching. Your WARN notice may name one; these are the closest to the sites in these filings.

North San Jose America`s Job Center of California (opens in a new tab)
1901 Zanker Road, San Jose, CA 95112 · 408-216-6200
Affiliate center (partial services) · about 4.2 miles from the San Jose site
North County Inland Career Center (opens in a new tab)
649 W. Mission Avenue, Escondido, CA 92025 · 619-319-9675
Comprehensive center (full services on site) · about 10.1 miles from the San Diego site

Locations and hours change — confirm before visiting, or find another center with the EDD's center locator (opens in a new tab). Directory: U.S. Department of Labor, Jul 31, 2026; distances are straight-line from the address in the filing.

Other layoffs filed in Santa Clara County around the same time

73 employers have WARN notices on file in Santa Clara County, covering 11,472 workers. These filed within about a quarter of this one.

eBay469 workers
Lodging Dynamics Hospitality Group, LLC278 workers
Synopsys, Inc.230 workers
FormFactor, Inc.220 workers
Clari Inc.172 workers
Western Digital Technologies134 workers

Listed because they appear in the same county in the same public data. No connection between these employers is implied.

Key points

Each point is explained and sourced above · Verified August 6, 2026

Workers affected · San Diego County, Santa Clara County · published since July 2025
106
CA EDD WARN report
Notices filed · California · published July 2025 to August 2026
2
CA EDD WARN report
Jobs end · As filed
Mar 17, 2026
CA EDD WARN report
Days between notice and last day · Arithmetic on two published dates
60 calendar days
CA EDD WARN report
Approximate outer claim deadline · 3 years from the last day of work — an outer edge, other claims run shorter
About Mar 17, 2029
Code Civ. Proc. § 338(a)
Santa Clara County unemployment rate · vs 5.2% statewide, not seasonally adjusted
4% (June 2026)
BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
Notice California law describes · California
60 days before a covered mass layoff
Lab. Code § 1401
Available exceptions · California
Physical calamity or act of war only
Lab. Code § 1401

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About this data

Where it comes from. Every figure on this page is reproduced from the WARN report the California Employment Development Department publishes at edd.ca.gov (opens in a new tab), retrieved Aug 6, 2026. Employers file these notices with the state, and the state publishes them as a public record.

We make no representation that it is accurate or complete. We reproduce the state's file as published and do not independently verify it. Notices are amended and withdrawn, employers correct their own filings, layoffs are called off, and the published report can lag or contain errors. Nothing here is a substitute for the EDD's own record, and if the two disagree, the EDD's is the one that counts.

How employers are grouped. The EDD's report lists one row per notice and often names the same employer several ways — with a store or site number, a warehouse code, a per-location name, or a spelling variation. This tracker groups those filings under one employer so a company's notices appear on a single page; every underlying filing still appears as its own row in that page's table. The grouping is ours, not the EDD's, and it never combines differently named companies, even ones related through ownership.

Nothing here says an employer did anything wrong. Filing a WARN notice is what the law asks an employer to do, so appearing in this data reflects compliance with the notice requirement rather than a violation of it. Where we show the number of days between a notice and the last day of work, that is arithmetic on two published dates and not a legal conclusion. The date recorded in a filing is not necessarily the date employees were told, employers of different sizes carry different obligations, and statutory exceptions can apply. Whether any particular layoff complied with the law is a fact-specific question that this page does not answer.

This page is general information about California law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Best Buy, and any company names are used only to identify publicly filed notices.

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