By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
PepsiCo is walking away from a Cheverly bottling plant that has run for more than 60 years, and all 143 workers there are losing their jobs. The company filed its notice with the Maryland Department of Labor on Sept. 14, the same day it notified employees, and the cuts hit fleet, transport, manufacturing, and warehouse staff at the Pepsi Bottling Group facility on Pepsi Place, near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Ninety-eight of those workers are represented by Teamsters Local 639. The town of Cheverly initially reported that only 98 of the 143 jobs were affected, but PepsiCo has since clarified that the entire plant workforce is being let go. Sales and delivery routes will keep running, the company says, but the production line will not. Affected employees keep their pay and benefits through Nov. 13.
“This decision was not made lightly,” a PepsiCo spokesperson said in a statement.
PepsiCo’s exit is the kind of story that makes headlines on its own. What it is not is unusual. A review of the Maryland Department of Labor’s official WARN and Economic Stabilization Act log for 2026 shows PepsiCo’s filing is one of nearly 100 layoff, closure and other dislocation notices the state has logged this year, listing roughly 6,700 employees at the affected worksites. That tally comes directly from the state’s own dislocation records, filed under the federal WARN Act and Maryland’s mini-WARN law, which require advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closures. The state’s “Total Employees” field is not always identical to the final number of people actually laid off, as PepsiCo’s own back-and-forth with Cheverly officials shows, so the figure is best read as the scale of what companies reported to the state, not a certified body count.
“The figure is best read as the scale of what companies reported to the state, not a certified body count.”
Gov. Wes Moore has spent this election year telling a different story. In his Feb. 11 State of the State address, he credited his administration with nearly 100,000 jobs created, and more than 35,000 new businesses opened since he took office, a claim his campaign has repeated through the summer. Those numbers are not fabricated, though they cover Moore’s full term, not just this year. For 2026 alone, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures released by the Maryland Department of Labor on Friday show the state added 20,100 jobs through the first eight months, but that total masks a rough patch: Maryland gained 10,200 jobs in July, revised down from an initial 11,700, then lost an estimated 8,200 jobs in August. Unemployment ticked down to 4.1 percent, matching the national rate.
“Maryland gained 10,200 jobs in July, then lost an estimated 8,200 jobs in August.”
But job creation and job destruction are happening at the same time, in the same state, often in the same industries Moore points to as evidence of a turnaround. Here is a sample of what has landed on the Department of Labor’s desk so far this year.
“Job creation and job destruction are happening at the same time, in the same state.”
- Diamond Transportation Services, Landover: 571 workers, the largest single filing of the year, as the paratransit contractor closed its Prince George’s County facility. The company had already cut 182 jobs at the same site last November after the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority reduced the bus routes it managed.
- Amazon delivery stations, five Maryland sites: 742 combined layoffs across four communities, Chevy Chase (two separate facilities), Gaithersburg, Glen Burnie and Silver Spring, all announced in Jan. 28 WARN filings with closures effective April 28.
- Microsoft’s ZeniMax studios, Rockville and Hunt Valley: 379 layoffs at ZeniMax Online Studios and ZeniMax Media, tied to a global cut of roughly 4,800 Xbox and gaming jobs. The Elder Scrolls Online studio’s workforce has shrunk by more than 60 percent since mid-2025.
- Amentum, Hanover: 382 jobs across two notices at the defense contractor’s Anne Arundel County offices.
- Republic National Distributing Company, Jessup: 318 jobs at the beverage distributor’s Howard County warehouse.
- EchoStar, Gaithersburg and Germantown: 330 jobs across three Montgomery County facilities.
- CBRE Government & Defense Services, Bethesda: 174 jobs tied to a federal facilities contract at the National Institutes of Health campus.
- Leidos: 227 jobs combined between its Windsor Mill and Fort Meade offices.
- Sibley-Suburban Home Health/Potomac Home Health, Bethesda: 163 jobs as the home health agency closed.
- T. Rowe Price, Baltimore: 54 more jobs cut in February, on top of the layoffs the Baltimore-based asset manager announced last year.
Retail and hospitality took hits too. Saks & Company closed or trimmed stores in Chevy Chase, Clarksburg and Hanover, cutting 106 jobs combined. Panera closed its Jessup location, laying off 118. IPIC Theaters shut down its North Bethesda location, cutting 116. Apple closed its Towson Town Center store, laying off 78. Stoney River Steakhouse in Towson let go of 68.
“The layoff list tells its own story about where the pain is landing.”
None of this means Maryland’s economy is collapsing. It isn’t. The state’s own numbers show more people working today than a year ago. But the layoff list tells its own story about where the pain is landing: engineering and defense contracting in Anne Arundel and Montgomery counties, logistics and warehousing in Prince George’s, finance in Baltimore, and legacy retail and hospitality across the suburbs. Part of that is a federal story as much as a state one. Maryland’s economy leans heavily on federal spending and federal employment, and an analysis by the Maryland Comptroller’s Office, published through the Brookings Institution’s DMV Monitor in June, found the state lost 29,200 federal jobs between January 2025 and April 2026, a hit that ripples out to contractors like Amentum, Leidos and CBRE long before it shows up in a state jobs report. Still, those contractor and tech jobs pay well above minimum wage, which is worth keeping in mind next to the governor’s office continuing to highlight announcements like a 2025 pledge from McDonald’s franchise owners to hire nearly 4,000 workers statewide. Tyrone Keys, a Baltimore-area real estate and financial advisory owner, argued at the time that the math undercuts the celebration: a $15-an-hour job works out to roughly $31,000 a year for a full-time worker, not far above the federal poverty line for a family of four.
“Part of that is a federal story as much as a state one.”
The fiscal backdrop has not helped the administration’s messaging. Moody’s stripped Maryland of its AAA bond rating in May 2025, downgrading the state to Aa1 and citing the state’s fiscal pressures and unusually heavy reliance on federal jobs and spending, along with reserves that were thinner than other top-rated states. Maryland has since stopped seeking ratings from Moody’s altogether. S&P Global Ratings kept its AAA rating in place this May but shifted the state’s outlook to negative, warning that Maryland’s structural budget gap is projected to grow from roughly $598 million next fiscal year to $2.6 billion by fiscal 2028 and more than $3.4 billion by fiscal 2030 without changes to spending or revenue.
“It’s the doctor saying you need to go on a diet,” state Sen. Justin Ready, R-Carroll, the Senate Minority Whip, said of the state’s finances after the Moody’s downgrade.
What to Watch
Diamond Transportation’s earlier round of Maryland layoffs traced back to WMATA route cuts, not a state decision, and it’s worth watching whether more contractor layoffs follow if the transit authority trims service further. Microsoft has signaled additional Xbox restructuring through fiscal 2027, which could mean more cuts at ZeniMax’s Maryland studios. And with the state’s structural deficit projected to widen through the decade, expect the jobs numbers to remain a central argument in this year’s governor’s race, on both sides.
Sources
This article draws on the Maryland Department of Labor’s 2026 WARN/ESA Log and Economic Stabilization Act filings (labor.maryland.gov); Food Dive, Fox 5 DC, WJLA, Patch, NBC Washington/NBC4 and Just Drinks reporting on PepsiCo’s Sept. 14 Cheverly WARN notice and the town of Cheverly’s subsequent correction of the affected worker count; the Maryland Department of Labor’s Sept. 18, 2026, employment situation release, as reported by Nottingham MD; AFRO News and WJLA coverage of Gov. Wes Moore’s Feb. 11, 2026, State of the State address; Technical.ly and Game Developer reporting on Microsoft’s July 2026 ZeniMax layoffs; Spotlight on Maryland/WBFF reporting on the McDonald’s jobs announcement, Tyrone Keys’ comments and Moody’s 2025 downgrade; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2025 federal poverty guidelines; the Maryland Comptroller’s Office analysis of federal job losses, published via the Brookings Institution’s DMV Monitor; S&P Global Ratings’ May 2026 research update on Maryland’s bond outlook; the Maryland Department of Legislative Services’ June 2026 bond sale report; and WJLA reporting on Maryland’s decision to drop Moody’s as a rating agency and Sen. Justin Ready’s comments on the state’s credit outlook.
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