Samsung’s Texas Move Cuts 739 New Jersey Jobs at a Year-Old Campus

Samsung Electronics America has cut 739 jobs at its ten-month-old Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey campus as it moves its US headquarters to Texas. A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, the filing known as a WARN notice, shows the cuts hit about 62 percent of the site’s roughly 1,200 employees, with most workers offered a move to Plano and others let go outright.

Ten months ago, local officials in Englewood Cliffs beat out Jersey City and Hoboken to land this campus. Now the small Bergen County borough is absorbing the cost of a corporate marriage that barely lasted a year, and it is not the only New Jersey institution left holding the bill.

Ten Months, Then a WARN Notice

Samsung Electronics America, the unit that handles US sales and marketing for the company’s phones, TVs, displays and home appliances, notified staff on June 30 of what internal documents reviewed by Reuters called an enterprise-wide reduction in force. The filing came weeks later, on July 19, putting a public number on what had been described only in vague terms.

The unit does not include Samsung’s semiconductor business, which is separate and currently posting record profits on AI-driven memory demand. Samsung told Reuters that a majority of the affected New Jersey employees received relocation offers to Texas, while others were laid off, and the company has not said how many people will ultimately leave the payroll.

More than 30 additional workers, including senior sales and marketing officials in both New Jersey and Texas, said on LinkedIn that they had been let go or had left the company in recent weeks. The picture stretches across three different sites and two different Samsung entities, which rarely line up neatly in press coverage.

Samsung disputes calling any of this a layoff wave. The company says the changes may affect employees unable to relocate or roles being restructured to fit business priorities, and it maintains there is no broader global restructuring underway in its consumer products business.

The Borough That Beat Jersey City for Samsung

Englewood Cliffs is a borough of roughly five thousand residents wedged along the Hudson River across from Manhattan. In 2024, its officials fought hard to land Samsung’s new North American headquarters at 700 Sylvan Avenue, the former Unilever campus, after Samsung spent more than three decades in nearby Ridgefield Park.

Local leaders offered a value improvement ordinance providing tax abatements for building upgrades, approved permits within a week, and even added a bus stop for employees. The borough reportedly outpaced Jersey City, Hoboken and other Bergen County towns competing for the same deal.

It’s an anchor that boosts our local economy, stabilizes our tax base.

Intashan Chowdhury, the borough’s administrator, said that of the deal at the time. Englewood Cliffs Councilman Tim Koutroubas called the town a hub for tech companies, noting that Samsung joined LG and CNBC among the borough’s corporate tenants.

The campus opened on September 22, 2025, with Acting Gov. Tahesha Way and US Rep. Josh Gottheimer among the officials who attended. Public records show the property contributed more than $720,000 in property taxes in 2026 alone. It is not clear how the borough would fill that gap if the building’s value declines once Samsung’s workforce thins out.

Why Texas Keeps Winning This Fight

Samsung’s move did not happen in a vacuum. Since breaking ground on its first Austin chip plant in 1996, the company has poured more than $40 billion into Texas, and Samsung called the Taylor project the largest investment it had ever made in the United States when it announced the plant in 2021. That initial $17 billion commitment has since grown into a potential $44 billion, multi-phase build-out.

Texas has kept sweetening the deal. State officials approved an additional $250 million subsidy for the Taylor plant last September, distributed through the state’s semiconductor innovation fund. Tesla has also signed on as a major customer for future Samsung-made chips, a deal its chief executive has put at more than $16 billion.

That is not new information to anyone who follows chips. What changed this year is that Samsung decided its entire American corporate identity, not just its factories, belongs in the same state.

1. 1996: Samsung breaks ground on its first Austin, Texas chip plant, the start of what becomes the largest foreign direct investment in state history.
2. November 2021: Samsung announces a $17 billion semiconductor fab in Taylor, Texas, its largest ever US investment at the time.
3. 2024: Samsung tells Englewood Cliffs officials it will move its New Jersey headquarters into the former Unilever campus.
4. September 22, 2025: Samsung holds a grand opening for the new Englewood Cliffs campus.
5. June 1, 2026: Samsung confirms it will move Samsung Electronics America’s headquarters to Plano, Texas, by year end.
6. June 30, 2026: Samsung tells Englewood Cliffs staff they are part of an enterprise-wide reduction in force.
7. July 19, 2026: A WARN filing reviewed by Reuters puts numbers on the cuts, 739 roles in New Jersey and about 100 in Plano.

Is Samsung the Only Company Leaving New Jersey?

No. ExxonMobil shareholders voted just days before Samsung’s announcement to make Texas the company’s official corporate home, ending 144 years of legal incorporation in New Jersey that dated back to 1882 as Standard Oil of New Jersey. New Jersey’s own business lobby says the exits are part of a longer pattern.

The state’s own business lobby says the number of Fortune 500 companies based in New Jersey has fallen from 22 in 2018 to 15 in 2025. Michele Siekerka, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, said Samsung’s move was not surprising, but it is no less sad.

New Jersey’s corporate tax rate sits at 11.5 percent for large businesses, the highest in the country according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Texas charges no corporate income tax and no personal income tax at all.

State Assemblyman John Azzariti Jr., a Republican, argued every time a major employer leaves, New Jersey loses jobs, economic activity, charitable investment and prestige. James Hughes, a Rutgers University professor of urban planning and policy development, put it more bluntly: this is a tough deal for New Jersey, and the state has to confront it.

What Happens to Workers Who Don’t Make the Move?

Samsung says a majority of affected Englewood Cliffs employees received relocation offers to Plano, while others were laid off outright. The company has not disclosed severance terms, how many workers accepted relocation, or how many jobs will ultimately disappear rather than simply move.

That silence is deliberate, or at least consistent. Samsung has repeatedly declined to confirm a specific layoff total, instead pointing reporters back to the WARN filing’s headcount of affected roles rather than a count of terminations.

What we know:

• 739 roles are listed as affected in the Englewood Cliffs WARN filing, out of a campus built for about 1,200 workers.
• About 100 workers have been let go at the Plano, Texas office, including staff in the mobile division.
• Samsung SDS America, a separate IT services affiliate, has flagged up to 179 possible cuts in Ridgefield Park tied to its own headquarters move.
• More than 30 additional employees across sales and marketing said on LinkedIn they left or were let go in recent weeks.

What’s unconfirmed:

• The exact number of employees who accepted relocation versus those who were terminated.
• Severance terms for employees who chose not to move to Texas.
• Whether Samsung will keep any consumer electronics staff working from New Jersey long term.

Some early reports in June pegged the campus workforce closer to 1,000; Rep. Gottheimer’s office, which attended the September opening, puts the figure at about 1,200. That gap alone shows how little hard data existed before the WARN filing became public.

Chips Boom While the Consumer Side Recalibrates

Samsung’s chip division is not part of this story in any direct sense, and that separation is the point. While consumer electronics absorbs the cuts, the company’s memory business is riding record demand tied to AI data centers, and the Taylor foundry is targeting 2027 for full production after repeated delays.

The consumer arm has not exactly gone quiet either. The same unit just pushed its Freestyle+ projector to a 50 percent US price jump, evidence that rising costs are squeezing the business even as it keeps selling. It has also placed its biggest foldable production order yet for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, hardly the posture of a division being wound down.

Samsung says the Texas move should be complete by the end of the year, the same window the company has set for the Taylor foundry to reach full operational readiness. For the first time since Samsung began US operations in 1978, its chips and its consumer corporate leadership will sit inside a single state.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people does Samsung employ in the US overall?

Samsung employed 11,770 people across its US operations at the end of 2025, a figure that includes both the consumer electronics side affected by these cuts and the separate semiconductor division, which is not being reduced.

Will Samsung’s chip jobs in Texas grow because of this move?

The Taylor foundry is a separate project from the headquarters relocation, but it is expected to add roughly 2,000 workers once it reaches full operation, according to reporting cited by TrendForce.

What is a WARN notice and why did this become public?

A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification is required under federal and state law when an employer plans a mass layoff, giving 60 days of advance notice. That legal requirement is why Samsung’s internal restructuring surfaced as a public filing rather than a quiet internal memo.

Does Samsung still have any offices left in New Jersey?

Yes. Reports around the June announcement indicated a smaller group of employees will remain in New Jersey to handle local operations, and Samsung SDS America’s Ridgefield Park presence is undergoing a separate, unrelated relocation of its own.

When will Samsung’s Texas headquarters move be complete?

Samsung has said it expects the relocation to Plano to be finished by the end of 2026, the same timeframe the company has given for its Taylor, Texas semiconductor foundry to reach operational readiness.