What This Means for New Jersey
Two WARN notices filed this week tell a story that’s bigger than either company involved. Verizon Corporate Resources Group filed for up to 282 potential layoffs by October 16. Samsung Electronics America filed for 739 by September 30 — the latest step in a headquarters relocation from Englewood Cliffs to Plano, Texas, that the company first announced back in June. Combined, that’s more than 1,000 jobs from two household names, filed in the same week, in the same state.
It’s a striking headline. It’s also part of a much larger pattern that anyone in our market — buyers, sellers, and the agents who serve them — should understand clearly rather than react to emotionally.
The scale of it, in numbers
New Jersey has filed 8,507 WARN layoff notices through the first five months of 2026 alone — a 17.9% increase over the same period in 2025. A recent Focus NJ analysis, “Missed Opportunities,” tracked eight major corporate decisions that either relocated jobs out of state or expanded operations elsewhere instead of in New Jersey. Across those eight cases, the report estimates more than 7,200 jobs shifted out of the state, tied to roughly $675 million in annual payroll.
New Jersey’s Fortune 500 count has fallen from 22 companies in 2018 to 15 in 2025 — a trend state lawmakers and business groups are now actively debating, with some pointing to the state’s corporate tax rate, currently the highest in the nation, as a driving factor.
Companies that have announced relocations or major job cuts out of New Jersey, 2025–2026
- Samsung Electronics America — Relocating its U.S. headquarters from Englewood Cliffs to Plano, Texas, by the end of 2026, affecting roughly 1,000–1,200 jobs. Notably, this comes just eight months after the company celebrated a grand opening of its Englewood Cliffs campus in September 2025.
- Mars Wrigley — Closing its Newark headquarters and market hub after more than 80 years in the city, cutting 307 positions as corporate functions consolidate into a newly expanded $100 million Chicago headquarters. Manufacturing operations in Hackettstown are not affected.
- Verizon — Filed multiple 2026 WARN notices tied to retail restructuring, including up to 282 potential layoffs by October, on top of earlier filings in June affecting 156 and 35 employees respectively.
- Bristol Myers Squibb — Named in the Focus NJ “Missed Opportunities” report among companies reducing in-state employment or expanding operations elsewhere.
- ExxonMobil — Among the companies shifting operations toward Texas, according to the same analysis.
- Eos Energy Enterprise — Included in the report’s list of reduced in-state employment or out-of-state expansion.
- Hertz Global Holdings — Included in the report’s list.
- Honeywell International — Included in the report’s list.
- Johnson & Johnson — Announced a more than $1 billion investment in a next-generation cell therapy manufacturing facility in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in February 2026, rather than in New Jersey.
- Walmart — Included in the Focus NJ report’s list of relocated or expanded-elsewhere jobs.
- Unilever — Moved its North American headquarters from Englewood Cliffs to Hoboken (an intrastate move, not an out-of-state one, but a notable departure from its longtime Bergen County campus).
Worth noting: this list mixes full headquarters relocations, retail and operational restructuring, and out-of-state expansion decisions — not every company on it is leaving New Jersey outright, and some (like Unilever) simply relocated within the state. The throughline across nearly all of them, though, is the same: corporate decision-makers are increasingly choosing to grow their footprint somewhere other than New Jersey.