Intel (INTC) Layoffs: Headcount Down 39,700 in Two Years,…

The most common assumption behind a search for Intel layoffs in September 2026 is that a new round is under way. Intel’s own filings say otherwise. The last verifiable Intel layoff notice on a US state register was filed on 3 December 2025 and covered 59 people across five Santa Clara buildings, according to California’s Employment Development Department WARN report for 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026. In the nine months since, no Intel notice has appeared in California at all. Meanwhile the headline number that most coverage still quotes is real but historic: Intel’s workforce fell from 124,800 people at the end of fiscal 2023 to 85,100 at the end of fiscal 2025, a net reduction of 39,700, or 31.8%, across two annual reports on Form 10-K. Nearly all of that happened in 2024 and 2025 under two separately named restructuring plans.

Here is the part almost nobody is pricing correctly. The single cleanest real-time gauge of whether a company is still cutting is its severance accrual, not its press coverage, and Intel’s has fallen off a cliff. In its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 27 June 2026, Intel recorded $161 million of employee severance and benefit charges, against $1,466 million in the same quarter of 2025 — a fall of 89%. For the first half the comparison is $235 million against $1,607 million, down 85%. The accrued severance balance ran down from $417 million at 27 December 2025 to $302 million at 27 June 2026, with $288 million paid out in cash and only $173 million of fresh accruals and adjustments booked in six months. Having tracked restructuring disclosure across several of these cycles, that is not the shape of a programme being extended. It is the shape of one being paid off. Intel says as much in plain language: “The substantial majority of actions pursuant to the 2025 Restructuring Plan were completed in 2025 with the remainder expected to be completed in 2026.”

Key facts

• 124,800 → 108,900 → 85,100 — Intel’s disclosed workforce at the end of fiscal 2023, 2024 and 2025 respectively, a net fall of 39,700 people (31.8%) — 2023 Form 10-K, 2024 Form 10-K, 2025 Form 10-K
• $161 million — Intel’s employee severance and benefit charges in Q2 2026, down 89% from $1,466 million in Q2 2025 — Form 10-Q, 24 July 2026
• $302 million — accrued severance still on the balance sheet at 27 June 2026, down from $417 million at 27 December 2025 after $288 million of cash payments — Form 10-Q, 24 July 2026
• About 75,000 — the core workforce Intel said on 24 July 2025 it planned to end that year with, “as a result of workforce reductions and attrition” — Q2 2025 results release
• $2.2 billion and $3.2 billion — total expected cost of the 2025 Restructuring Plan as of 27 June 2026, and total charges incurred under the separate 2024 Restructuring Plan — Form 10-Q, 24 July 2026
• 8,975 — US layoffs Intel has logged on state WARN registers since 20 March 2024, per the CHIPS Communities United lay-off tracker, of which 4,478 are in Oregon alone
• Revenue up 25% — Intel’s Q2 2026 revenue of $16.1 billion, which chief executive Lip-Bu Tan called the company’s strongest revenue growth in more than fifteen years — Q2 2026 results release, 23 July 2026

Which round is which: the 2024 plan and the 2025 plan are not the same thing

Most of the confusion in Intel layoff coverage comes from stacking two distinct programmes on top of each other and reporting the sum as one event. Intel names them separately in its accounts, and the distinction matters because they had different chief executives, different targets and different mechanics.

The 2024 Restructuring Plan was announced on 1 August 2024, alongside second-quarter results, under then chief executive Pat Gelsinger. The release committed Intel to “a more than 15% headcount reduction, to resize and refocus”, with the majority completed by the end of 2024, alongside a $10 billion cut to combined operating and capital spending in 2025 against previous estimates and the suspension of the dividend from the fourth quarter. Gelsinger’s framing was blunt: “Our Q2 financial performance was disappointing, even as we hit key product and process technology milestones.” Intel has since incurred approximately $3.2 billion of total charges under that plan, and expects it to be completed in 2026.

The 2025 Restructuring Plan is a different animal, announced and commenced in the second quarter of 2025 under Lip-Bu Tan. Intel’s Q2 2025 release of 24 July 2025 said the company “has completed the majority of the planned headcount actions it announced last quarter to reduce its core workforce by approximately 15%” and, critically, that “Intel plans to end the year with a core workforce of about 75,000 employees as a result of workforce reductions and attrition.” The same release cancelled planned projects in Germany and Poland, folded assembly and test operations in Costa Rica into the larger sites in Vietnam and Malaysia, and slowed construction in Ohio further. That is the round that produced the site-closure headlines, and it carried $1.9 billion of restructuring charges in a single quarter.

The 2025 annual report closes the loop with a sentence worth reading exactly as written: “These headcount reduction initiatives reduced our core Intel workforce by approximately 15% by the end of fiscal 2025, as compared to our Q2 2025 ending employee headcount.” Note the base. The 15% is measured against the mid-2025 core headcount, not the pre-2024 company, and it excludes Mobileye and other subsidiaries, which the 85,100 total does include. A further caveat most tallies drop: Intel deconsolidated Altera on 12 September 2025 after selling 51% of it, so part of the 23,800-person fall between the 2024 and 2025 annual reports is a divestiture, not a redundancy. Intel does not break out Altera’s headcount, so 39,700 is the net change in the reported workforce rather than a count of people made redundant.

What the WARN paper trail actually shows

State WARN registers are the closest thing to a live feed on US layoffs, because employers are legally obliged to file them in advance of qualifying mass redundancies. Intel’s California trail is unusually legible. In the fiscal year to 30 June 2026, the EDD register shows Intel notices filed on 7 July 2025 (584 people across Santa Clara and Folsom), 10 July 2025 (a further 496), amendments on 25 August 2025 adding 181, and then a final tranche filed on 3 December 2025 with an effective date of 30 November 2025 covering 59 people. That is 1,320 for the year, and the December filing is the last one.

The current California WARN file, covering 1 July 2026 to 31 August 2026, contains 186 notices from employers across the state. None of them is Intel. Taken with the fiscal-year report, that means no Intel WARN notice has been filed in California in the nine months to 31 August 2026.

Nationally, the picture is dominated by Oregon rather than California. CHIPS Communities United, a labour and community coalition that tracks Intel notices state by state from the date Intel signed its CHIPS Act preliminary memorandum on 20 March 2024, logs 4,478 layoffs in Oregon, 2,675 in California, 1,178 in Arizona, 361 in Texas, 227 in New Mexico and 56 in Pennsylvania — 8,975 in the United States, against a global figure the coalition puts at 30,000. The most recent Oregon source document in that tracker is a November 2025 notice. The coalition’s underlying point is political rather than financial: it argues that when the CHIPS grant was converted into a US government equity stake, Intel ceased to be contractually bound to the job-creation commitments attached to the original award. Intel has not disputed the conversion, which it disclosed to the SEC, but it has not accepted the coalition’s characterisation of its obligations either.

The gap between 8,975 US WARN filings and a 39,700 fall in reported headcount is not a contradiction. WARN thresholds capture only mass actions at qualifying sites, and much of Intel’s reduction came through voluntary separation packages, attrition, non-US roles and the Altera deconsolidation, none of which generate a US notice.

The arithmetic: what Intel actually paid to shrink

Restructuring charges are the price tag, and Intel’s are now disclosed across three cycles. In 2025 the company recognised $2,191 million of total restructuring and other charges, of which $1.5 billion of severance related to the 2025 plan and $281 million to the 2024 plan and other actions. In 2024 the equivalent total was $6,970 million, including $2,481 million of severance and $3,631 million of asset impairments. As of 27 June 2026 the total expected and cumulative cost of the 2025 plan stood at $2.2 billion.

Combining two disclosures that Intel presents separately produces an estimate the company itself does not publish. If the core workforce ended 2025 at about 75,000 after a roughly 15% cut from the second-quarter 2025 base, that base was in the region of 88,000 and the involuntary element was on the order of 13,000 people. Set that against the $1.5 billion of severance booked under the 2025 plan and the implied cost is roughly $115,000 per departing employee. That is an inference from Intel’s own numbers rather than a disclosure, and it is sensitive to how much of the reduction came through attrition — but it is the right order of magnitude for a workforce weighted towards US engineering salaries, and it explains why cash is still running out of the balance sheet nine months after the last WARN notice.

For readers tracking the equity rather than the payroll, the cost line is now a rounding error against the operating result. Intel’s Q2 2026 restructuring and other charges totalled $170 million, against $1,890 million a year earlier. Our Intel (INTC) bull and bear case works through what that cost base now implies for the shares.

The trap in the headline loss, and the politics underneath it

Anyone checking Intel’s most recent quarter for confirmation that the layoffs must be continuing will find a $(11.0) billion GAAP net loss attributable to Intel and $(2.16) of GAAP earnings per share, and will draw the wrong conclusion. Those numbers have almost nothing to do with the workforce. In the same quarter, Intel’s GAAP operating margin was positive 11.1%, gross margin was 40.4% against 27.5% a year earlier, non-GAAP earnings were $0.42 per share against $(0.10), and the company generated $7.0 billion of cash from operations.

The loss is a mark-to-market. Under the US Government Agreement Intel entered into with the Department of Commerce on 22 August 2025, the company issued Escrowed Shares to the US government and releases them as it receives cash for its performance under the Secure Enclave programme. Intel recognised $12.5 billion of losses in the second quarter of 2026, and $13.6 billion across the first half, on the net change in the fair value of those shares. The related derivative liability rose from $1.1 billion at 27 December 2025 to $8.8 billion at 27 June 2026, and it grows when the share price rises. Intel closed at $90.05 on 2 September 2026 against a 52-week range of $23.68 to $142.35, per stockanalysis.com, which is precisely why the accounting loss is so large. We covered that quarter in our Intel Q2 2026 earnings report.

This is the regulatory tension in its purest form. Washington converted a grant into equity to protect taxpayers and, in doing so, created an accounting instrument that makes Intel’s recovery look like a collapse on the GAAP line, while campaigners argue the same conversion released Intel from the job-creation promises the grant was meant to buy. Both effects flow from one transaction, and both sit in the same 10-Q.

The company is spending again, which is the real tell

Restructuring programmes end when management starts committing capital rather than releasing it, and Intel’s second-quarter 2026 disclosures are full of that. The company announced a €5 billion investment to expand manufacturing capacity for Xeon 6 and next-generation Xeon processors built on Intel 3, expanded Bowers campus capacity for its mask operations, entered high-volume manufacturing for a subset of Panther Lake processors using ASML’s High-NA EUV tooling, and appointed four senior leaders: Alex Katouzian to run the Client Computing and Physical AI Group, Pushkar Ranade as chief technology officer, Seok-Hee Lee to lead advanced packaging, and Aparna Bawa to lead legal, ethics, compliance, people and culture.

“AI-driven compute continues to strengthen, and to support expected growth this year and next across products and foundry, we are meaningfully increasing our investments in equipment, clean room space, and substrates,” said Dave Zinsner, chief financial officer at Intel, in the second-quarter release. Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive at Intel, added: “Our Q2 results represent our strongest revenue growth in more than fifteen years, enabled by greater speed, accountability, and customer focus.”

A year earlier, the same chief executive had struck a very different note in the release that launched the 2025 plan: “It’s going to take time, but we see clear opportunities to enhance our competitive position, improve our profitability and create long-term shareholder value.” The distance between those two sentences is thirteen months and roughly a third of the workforce.

There is a broader pattern here that layoff trackers consistently get backwards. Oracle’s payroll-cut instruction, covered in Oracle’s September deadline piece, and Visa’s plan to cut 2,600 jobs, are both read as distress signals. Intel complicates that reading: the deepest cut of the three preceded the strongest revenue quarter in fifteen years. Layoff volume is a lagging indicator of a cost problem already identified, and a poor leading indicator of anything else.

What happens next

Three things follow from the disclosures, with the reasoning attached.

First, the 2026 severance line should keep shrinking rather than turning. Intel has told investors the remainder of both the 2024 and 2025 plans completes in 2026, the accrued balance is down to $302 million, and cash payments in the first half already exceeded fresh accruals by $115 million. Absent a new named plan in a future filing, expect full-year 2026 severance charges in the low hundreds of millions rather than the $1.8 billion booked in 2025.

Second, the next credible Intel layoff story will arrive as an 8-K or a WARN filing, not as a forum post. Every prior round appeared first in a results release or a state register. The practical test for any Intel layoff claim between now and the third-quarter results is simple: check whether the California EDD file or the Oregon register carries a new Intel notice. As of 31 August 2026, neither did.

Third, the risk has moved from redundancy to retention. Intel’s 2025 annual report discloses an undesired turnover rate of 7.9% in 2025 against 5.9% in 2024, and warns that headcount reductions “may in the future be disruptive, adversely impact employee morale, compromise our ability to deliver on our strategy and workforce goals (including as a result of the loss of historical, technical or other expertise) and impact our ability to recruit.” A company ramping 18A, expanding packaging and adding clean room space needs process engineers it spent two years shedding. If Intel misses in 2027, the constraint is more likely to be people it no longer employs than people it still does.

Frequently asked questions

Is Intel doing layoffs right now in September 2026?
There is no evidence of an active round. Intel’s most recent Form 10-Q describes the remaining actions of the 2024 and 2025 restructuring plans as finishing in 2026, quarterly severance charges have fallen 89% year on year to $161 million, and no Intel WARN notice has been filed in California since 3 December 2025.

How many people has Intel cut in total?
Intel’s reported workforce fell from 124,800 at the end of fiscal 2023 to 85,100 at the end of fiscal 2025, a net reduction of 39,700. That figure is not a pure redundancy count: it includes attrition, voluntary separations and the deconsolidation of Altera in September 2025.

How many Intel layoffs were filed under WARN?
CHIPS Communities United counts 8,975 US layoffs on state registers since March 2024 — 4,478 in Oregon, 2,675 in California, 1,178 in Arizona, 361 in Texas, 227 in New Mexico and 56 in Pennsylvania. WARN only captures qualifying mass actions at covered sites, so it understates the total.

What is the difference between the 2024 and 2025 Intel restructuring plans?
The 2024 plan was announced on 1 August 2024 under Pat Gelsinger and targeted a headcount reduction of more than 15% alongside $10 billion of spending cuts and a suspended dividend. The 2025 plan was announced in the second quarter of 2025 under Lip-Bu Tan, targeted a roughly 15% cut to the core workforce and a year-end core headcount of about 75,000, and cancelled the German and Polish projects.

Why did Intel report an $11 billion loss if the layoffs are over?
The Q2 2026 GAAP loss is driven by $12.5 billion of mark-to-market losses on Escrowed Shares issued to the US government under the August 2025 Department of Commerce agreement. The liability rises as Intel’s share price rises. Operating margin in the same quarter was positive 11.1% and non-GAAP earnings were $0.42 per share.

Which Intel sites were closed or cut back?
In the July 2025 release Intel cancelled planned projects in Germany and Poland, said it would consolidate Costa Rica assembly and test operations into its larger sites in Vietnam and Malaysia, and slowed construction in Ohio. Oregon’s Hillsboro campuses absorbed the largest single share of US job losses.

Is Intel hiring again?
Intel has not published a hiring target, but it announced a €5 billion capacity expansion for Xeon on Intel 3, expanded its Bowers mask operations, and appointed four senior leaders in the second quarter of 2026, while the chief financial officer said the company is “meaningfully increasing our investments in equipment, clean room space, and substrates.”

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Figures are drawn from Intel’s SEC filings, state WARN registers and market data as at 3 September 2026.