John Deere to lay off more than 200 employees across three factories

Deere & Company announced Friday that 238 employees at three factories will be laid off.

The layoffs will be at:

Affected employees were notified Aug. 15.

In a statement on Friday, Deere attributed the layoffs to a decrease in demand and lower order volumes.

"As stated on our most recent earnings call, the struggling ag economy continues to impact orders for John Deere equipment," Deere said in its statement. "This is a challenging time for many farmers, growers, and producers, and directly impacts our business in the near term."

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Affected employees are eligible to be recalled to their home factory and are placed in seniority order for openings, according to the announcement. Among other benefits, aid-off employees will receive monetary benefits and health care benefits, including keeping their health care coverage for at least six months, or as long as they are eligible for supplemental employment benefit pay.

Rumors of layoffs began swirling Thursday when a post on the Illinois Work Net Center website showed a layoff notification for Deere & Co.'s East Moline Harvester Works. Deere did not confirm impending layoffs on Thursday.

Eliza Glezer, assistant deputy director for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, which runs the Workforce Adjustment and Retraining Notification system for Illinois, told the Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus in an email that the Illinois WARN notification was an internal error, which has since been corrected.

Glezer said the department apologizes for the oversight and is evaluating the processes to ensure a similar error does not occur in the future.

A notice on Iowa’s WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) website last Friday reported 71 employees would be affected by a mass layoff at John Deere Waterloo Works.

These layoffs bring Deere layoffs this year to 831

Previous reporting indicates Deere & Co. began laying off employees in October 2023, when it laid off 225 people at the Harvester Works in East Moline. Since then, a total of 725 layoffs at the East Moline plant specifically have been reported.

So far in 2025, Deere has laid off 593 workers. With the upcoming layoffs, it will increase layoffs to 831 employees in 2025. Of those, 454 are in the Quad Cities.

From October 2023 to the end of September 2025, Deere will have laid off more than 3,500 employees. Of those, 1,767 are in the Quad Cities.