University of Southern California California Layoffs 2025: What Employees Should Know

What the filing says

These are the details as University of Southern California 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.

University of Southern California 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.

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.

USC began issuing layoff notices in July 2025 as it worked to close an operating deficit that exceeded $200 million in fiscal 2025, up from $158 million the year before. By early November the university had issued more than 900 notices across the university and its health system, including student academic advisers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The largest single round covered 259 employees, with the first cuts effective in late October and the last by Dec. 31, 2025; notifications in that round began Aug. 18. Those roles were on USC's main Los Angeles campus and included student advisers, administrative assistants and other support staff, Higher Ed Dive reported.

Annenberg Media reported that earlier rounds had reached at least 692 layoffs by Oct. 3, 2025, spanning the Viterbi School of Engineering, the Rossier School of Education, the Keck School of Medicine and Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and affecting professors, adjunct and clinical instructors, academic program directors, student services advisors and SEIU-represented staff.

Sources: Los Angeles Times (via AOL) (opens in a new tab) · Higher Ed Dive (opens in a new tab) · Annenberg Media (opens in a new tab)

What the numbers show

• The 957 affected positions are in Los Angeles.
• They cover 13 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 9 separate last days of work, running from September 10, 2025 to December 31, 2025.
• At least one notice here is dated 9 days after the last day of work it reports. Notices are sometimes filed or amended after the fact, so this describes the paperwork rather than when anyone was told.
• Within Los Angeles County, this accounts for 6% of all workers covered by WARN notices on file, across 158 employers.
• By headcount it is the 7th-largest of the 593 employer layoffs tracked here.
• The 957 workers leaving University of Southern California re-enter a job market where Los Angeles County unemployment stood at 5.3% in June 2026, above the 5.2% statewide rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted).
• The filings arrived in 5 separate months between July 2025 and November 2025 — a rolling reduction rather than a single event. The heaviest was September 2025, when 7 notices covered 350 jobs.

These are counts and comparisons drawn from the published filings, not findings about University of Southern California.

Free job-search help near Los Angeles

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.

• Veterans AJCC (opens in a new tab)

  1816 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90015 · 626-375-6792

  Affiliate center (partial services) · about 1.3 miles from the Los Angeles site

• Boyle Heights WorkSource Center (opens in a new tab)

  1505 E. 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033 · 323-267-5930

  Comprehensive center (full services on site) · about 1.3 miles from the Los Angeles site

• Northeast Los Angeles WorkSource Center (opens in a new tab)

  342 North San Fernando Road, Los Angeles, CA 90031 · 323-539-2000

  Comprehensive center (full services on site) · about 1.6 miles from the Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles County around the same time

158 employers have WARN notices on file in Los Angeles County, covering 17,303 workers. These filed within about a quarter of this one.

• Republic National Distributing Company1,756 workers
• Oracle America, Inc.1,250 workers
• Adventist Health607 workers
• Children's Hospital Los Angeles439 workers
• Blue Shield of California433 workers
• Kaiser Foundation Hospitals345 workers

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