Chevron California Layoffs 2026: What Employees Should Know

What the filing says

These are the details as Chevron reported them to the state. The EDD publishes every notice, and this page reflects the data as of Jul 31, 2026.

How much notice the law requires

California's WARN Act requires 60 days of advance written notice before a covered mass layoff. What makes the California version unusual is how few ways out it gives an employer. The only statutory exception is a physical calamity or an act of war. Federal law has three exceptions, including one for unforeseeable business circumstances, and the California Legislature deliberately declined to copy them.

Chevron severance: what to check before you sign

A severance offer is not the same thing as the notice pay the WARN Act describes, and an employer cannot use one to satisfy the other. A release may also give up more than you expect, and an arbitration agreement you signed at hire can affect where a dispute is heard. Read our full guide to the California WARN Act before you decide, and consider having the paperwork looked at.

Two things worth doing this week either way. File for unemployment now, because WARN money does not reduce it. And keep every document, including the notice itself and anything showing when it arrived.

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. 1 of the 3 notices here fall after that date; the earlier ones were not subject to the new content rules. If you kept your copy, it is worth reading down this list against it.

• Everything federal law requires. A California notice has to carry all the elements the federal WARN Act calls for, including whether the action is permanent, the expected date, and whether bumping rights exist.
• Whether transition help is being coordinated. The notice must say whether the employer is arranging services through your local workforce development board, through some other organization, or not at all.
• A working email and phone number for that board, plus a short standard paragraph pointing you to an America's Job Center of California for help with a resume, interview practice, job searching, and training programs.
• Services arranged within 30 days. If the employer said it would coordinate services, the statute gives it 30 days from the date of the notice to actually set them up.
• CalFresh information. A description of the CalFresh food assistance program, the benefits helpline, and a link to the CalFresh website.
• A working email and phone number for the employer. Not a no-reply address — a route back to a person.

Source: Labor Code section 1401, as amended by SB 617 (Stats. 2025, ch. 229), effective January 1, 2026. A notice missing something on this list is not automatically a violation with a remedy attached, and this page does not say that it is. Whether a gap matters depends on the employer, the action, and what else happened.

Questions people are asking

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.

Chevron's July 1, 2026 notice covers about 180 San Ramon positions with an effective date of September 1, 2026. Chevron stated in the filing that the action is "a relocation, not a layoff or termination," and that it expects to move those workers to Houston as it continues shifting its corporate headquarters out of California, according to Powder & Bulk Solids.

The affected roles span legal affairs, information technology, cybersecurity, engineering, commercial operations, human resources and corporate communications. Chevron said it is "providing relocation assistance and other support to affected employees, who have received advance notice of their expected moving dates," and that employees may move earlier if they choose.

Chevron indicated more relocations are planned for 2027 and that it will "submit another notice at the appropriate time." Powder & Bulk Solids noted this follows roughly 800 San Ramon and Bakersfield job cuts in 2025, which are separate from this filing.

Sources: Powder & Bulk Solids (opens in a new tab)

What the numbers show

• The filings name 2 locations: San Ramon and Bakersfield.
• They cover 3 separate addresses rather than a single site, so co-workers at different locations may have received different dates.
• The jobs do not all end on the same day. The filings list 2 separate last days of work, running from October 23, 2025 to September 1, 2026.
• Within Contra Costa County, this accounts for 30% of all workers covered by WARN notices on file, across 14 employers.
• By headcount it sits in the top 10% of the 593 employer layoffs tracked here.
• The EDD records the employer's sector as Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction.
• The 300 workers leaving Chevron re-enter a job market where Contra Costa County unemployment stood at 4.5% in June 2026, below the 5.2% statewide rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted).
• The filings came in waves: 2 notices in August 2025 covering 120 jobs, then one notice in July 2026 covering 180 jobs.

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

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; this is the closest to the site in these filings.

• EPIC - Envision-Plan-Innovate-Connect (opens in a new tab)

  2211 H Street, Bakersfield, CA 93301 · 661-336-6460

  Affiliate center (partial services) · about 5.4 miles from the Bakersfield 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 Contra Costa County around the same time

14 employers have WARN notices on file in Contra Costa County, covering 821 workers. These filed within about a quarter of this one.

• Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream914 workers
• Adventist Health607 workers
• Kaiser Foundation Hospitals345 workers
• Randstad Inhouse Services, LLC324 workers
• Web To Door Corporation192 workers
• Southwest Key Programs, Inc.171 workers

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