Qualcomm Incorporated California Layoffs 2026: What Employees Should Know

What the filing says

These are the details as Qualcomm Incorporated reported them to the state. The EDD publishes every notice, and this page reflects the data as of Jul 31, 2026. All 20 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.

Qualcomm 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.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Qualcomm, San Diego's largest public company, is laying off 104 local employees across 11 San Diego facilities, including its headquarters, and that no plants will be closed, according to the WARN notice.

About 80% of the cuts are concentrated in IT, engineering and cybersecurity, and nearly half were senior roles — including nine principal-level positions, among them directors and one vice president — the Union-Tribune reported. Qualcomm did not respond to the paper's request for comment.

Newsradio 600 KOGO reported the cuts also reach marketing, customer service and management positions, with the reductions taking effect at the end of May.

Sources: The San Diego Union-Tribune (opens in a new tab) · Newsradio 600 KOGO (opens in a new tab)

What the numbers show

• The 105 affected positions are in San Diego.
• They cover 19 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 May 26, 2026 to June 8, 2026.
• By headcount it sits in the top 40% of the 593 employer layoffs tracked here.
• The 105 workers leaving Qualcomm Incorporated re-enter a job market where San Diego County unemployment stood at 4.4% in June 2026, below the 5.2% statewide rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted).
• All 20 notices are dated within a single month, April 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 Qualcomm.

Free job-search help near San Diego

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.

• Metro Career Center (opens in a new tab)

  4389 Imperial Avenue, San Diego, CA 92113 · 619-319-9675

  Affiliate center (partial services) · about 14.3 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 San Diego County around the same time

66 employers have WARN notices on file in San Diego County, covering 6,025 workers. These filed within about a quarter of this one.

• Intuit Inc.910 workers
• ServiceNow, Inc.404 workers
• Epic Games Inc.135 workers
• Legacy Supply Chain129 workers
• MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc.125 workers
• Intrepid Studios, Inc.123 workers

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