Heritage Bank of Commerce California Layoffs 2026: What Employees Should Know

What the filing says

These are the details as Heritage Bank of Commerce reported them to the state. The EDD publishes every notice, and this page reflects the data as of Jul 31, 2026. All 12 are listed below; the table scrolls.

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.

Heritage Bank of Commerce 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. Every notice on this page falls after that date. 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.

Bay Area News Group reported that Heritage Bank of Commerce decided to eliminate 121 jobs in the Bay Area and San Benito County effective April 17 in the wake of its agreement to be bought by another bank, with the vast majority of the cuts — 97 jobs — at the bank's corporate headquarters at 224 Airport Parkway in North San Jose.

Planned cuts at the branches were five jobs in San Mateo, four each in Walnut Creek and Danville, three each in San Rafael and San Francisco, and one each in Oakland, Livermore, Los Altos, Morgan Hill and Hollister, and the job cuts were described as permanent, according to the report.

In December, Heritage Commerce Corp. and CVB Financial, owner of Citizens Business Bank, announced an $811 million deal whereby Heritage would be merged into CVB Financial, and corporate mergers often trigger job losses from redundancies, Bay Area News Group reported.

Sources: Bay Area News Group via The Press Democrat (opens in a new tab) · Citizens Business Bank (opens in a new tab)

What the numbers show

• The filings name 11 California locations, including Livermore, Oakland, Danville, Walnut Creek, San Rafael and Hollister.
• They cover 11 separate addresses rather than a single site, so co-workers at different locations may have received different dates.
• The shortest gap between notice and last day here is 49 days, against a statewide median of 61 days across every notice on file.
• By headcount it sits in the top 35% of the 593 employer layoffs tracked here.
• The 121 workers leaving Heritage Bank of Commerce 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 12 notices are dated within a single month, February 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 Heritage Bank of Commerce.

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.

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

72 employers have WARN notices on file in Santa Clara County, covering 11,407 workers. These filed within about a quarter of this one.

• eBay469 workers
• Lucid Group, Inc.455 workers
• Snap Inc.320 workers
• Supernal, LLC296 workers
• Primary School294 workers
• Lodging Dynamics Hospitality Group, LLC278 workers

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