Texas is facing one of its biggest job loss events in recent years. In late October 2025, nearly 1,300 workers lost their jobs when 24 companies filed notices to lay off employees. Most of these job cuts are expected to occur between late December and early January, making the holiday season especially challenging for the affected families.
The layoffs hit factories and banks across the state, from El Paso to Dallas, San Antonio, and smaller towns. Major companies, including Flagstone Foods, Wells Fargo, and Eden Green Technology, announced that they were closing facilities or cutting hundreds of positions.
Unlike temporary layoffs, these are permanent closures—the plants and offices won’t reopen, and workers won’t be called back. This wave of job losses marks a troubling shift for Texas, which has historically been better at keeping people employed than most other states during economic downturns.
Why Jobs Are Disappearing and Unemployment Is Rising
Several factors are combining to eliminate jobs across Texas. High interest rates have made it harder for people to buy homes and products, which has slowed down business for manufacturers and mortgage companies.
Tariffs on imported materials have increased costs for factories, while stricter immigration policies have reduced the number of available workers. Manufacturing has been hit particularly hard—the United States lost 78,000 factory jobs over the past year, with Texas accounting for 7,000 of those losses.
Manufacturing output in August 2025 dropped to its lowest level since July 2020. The result has been visible in Texas unemployment numbers. In August 2025, Texas’s unemployment rate reached 4.7 percent, higher than the national average of 4.5 percent for the first time in years.
San Antonio’s unemployment rate jumped from 3.9 to 4.4 percent in just one month. From January to October 2025, more than 747,000 Texans filed unemployment claims—a 7 percent increase compared to the same period in 2023. The Dallas Federal Reserve has lowered its forecast for Texas job growth from 2.0 percent to 1.3 percent, anticipating worsening conditions.
What This Means for Texas Workers and Families
The specific companies closing their doors tell the full story of how widespread these job losses are. Flagstone Foods shut down its El Paso plant, eliminating 225 jobs, with workers’ last day on December 19. Eden Green Technology closed both of its Cleburne greenhouses, resulting in the elimination of 102 positions on December 13.
Tekni-Plex stopped most operations at its Dallas facility, resulting in 64 layoffs on December 26. Pure Hothouse closed its San Antonio distribution center on December 31, resulting in the loss of 80 jobs. Natura PCR suspended its $150 million recycling plant in Waller, laying off 88 workers.
The banking industry also suffered major cuts. Wells Fargo eliminated 225 positions in Lubbock on December 26, part of a massive reduction that shrunk the bank’s total workforce from 276,000 employees in 2020 to just 211,000 by September 2025—a 24 percent drop.
Colonial Savings, a Fort Worth financial institution that has been operating since 1952, announced it will close its entire mortgage division and eliminate 130 jobs by July 2026. Manufacturing jobs have historically provided middle-class wages and stability, but these positions now account for just 8 percent of U.S. employment, down from 22 percent in 1979.
The new jobs appearing in Texas are mostly in hotels, construction, and healthcare—fields that typically pay less and offer fewer benefits than factory work. Economists warn that even if economic conditions improve, automation means many factory jobs will not return.
Texas now faces a critical challenge: can lower-paying service jobs replace the income and security that manufacturing once provided to working families across the state?