When a Tennessee company is preparing to lay off more than 50 employees or close a plant, it is typically required to file a 60-day notice, including how many workers are affected and when the mass layoff will take place.
Though there were more than two major layoffs in the Chattanooga area in 2025, there were only two of the notices filed with the state.
One came from Knoxville-based SSC Services, which permanently cut 296 Chattanooga employees in May, and the other from Chattanooga-based BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which closed down a local subsidiary with 150 employees in September. SSC Services had a four-year contract with Hamilton County Schools for custodial services, which ended in 2025.
Other companies did not file notice with the state, like Wacker Chemical Corp., which cut 90 workers at its polysilicon plant in Bradley County in July.
For Wacker, the exemption to the notice was thanks to the size of its local workforce. Tennessee law requires employers with between 50 and 99 full-time employees at a workplace in the state to give notice of any layoff of 50 or more employees.