Store Closure Watch

The dataset

The US business closure dataset

Store Closure Watch tracks verified business closure and distress events across the United States — retail, restaurant, industrial, logistics, grocery, healthcare, office, and hospitality. Every record carries an event type and status, a location, an evidence snippet, a source link, and a confidence flag. New edition every Monday.

Updated September 5, 2026

Coverage

Counts as of the latest published edition.

16,702
records in the dataset
all events, all years
372
chains tracked
with their own pages
51
states covered
all 50 plus Washington, D.C.
646
added this week
across 542 businesses
2,479
records with a WARN notice
5,146
records with liquidation detail
30.8% of the dataset; recent editions run 11.7%, since July 10, 2026
10,011
records with a stated date
3,474
records with jobs impacted

“Liquidation detail” counts a record when any of: Liquidation Sales Status, Type of Goods, Inventory Disposition Method, Major On-site Assets is populated. A stricter test — a stated liquidation sale only — is rarer, and the rate on recent editions is the one to plan around: our extraction tightened in May 2026, so all-time figures run well above what a current week delivers.

What the numbers mean

Three figures on this site count different things. They are not interchangeable, and we would rather say so than be quoted wrongly.

16,702 — records in the dataset
Every event we hold, across every year and every event type. This is the size of the file, not a count of 2026 closures.
15,750 — publishable records
The subset we publish. It excludes canceled and speculative events and legal-filing artifacts, which stay in the dataset but never count as closures.
13,766 — public 2026 closure events
Events dated to 2026. Our state, city, sector, and retailer pages are evergreen and show all years, labelled with the split — so a state total will be larger than its 2026 share.

What every record carries

The weekly subscriber file ships these columns with a data dictionary. Public pages show business, city, and status only.

Business name
Chain or independent operator, alias-folded
Event type
Closure, Bankruptcy, Layoff, Restructuring, Relocation, Conversion / Sale, Other
Event status
Confirmed, Announced, Effective, Pending / Conditional, Unstated
Closure or effective date
Where stated; undated records are flagged, never guessed
Street address
Address-level for located sites
City, state, metro
Every record
Coordinates
US Census-derived, with match tier
Sector
Eight buckets, classified from the business
Jobs impacted
Where reported, usually via WARN
WARN linkage
Notice attached where one exists
Bankruptcy case
Docket and court where applicable
Evidence snippet
The quoted text the record rests on
Source link
Every record, no exceptions
Confidence flag
How firm the record is

Where the data comes from

  • Company announcements
    Press releases, investor filings, and store-locator changes
  • State WARN notices
    Mass-layoff and closure filings, 41 states collected directly
  • Federal bankruptcy dockets
    Chapter 7 and 11 case documents and asset schedules
  • FDIC structure filings
    Bank branch closures
  • FMCSA authority records
    Motor-carrier shutdowns
  • State health-facility licensing
    Hospital, clinic, and care-facility closures
  • News coverage
    Local and trade press, verified before it becomes a record

How a record is verified

  1. 1. Extraction. Events are pulled from filings, dockets, regulator feeds, and news, each with the passage it came from.
  2. 2. Verification pass. An independent pass re-reads the evidence and rejects records the source doesn't actually support.
  3. 3. Cross-reference. Records are matched against state WARN filings and federal court dockets, which attach jobs numbers and case links.
  4. 4. Deduplication. One closure reported by five outlets is one record, not five.

Full methodology on the about page.

Sector mix

Publishable records by sector, largest first.

The eight sectors sum to 14,943. A further 738 publishable records carry no sector — unnamed businesses, and bankruptcy and layoff filings without a stated business type — and sectors under 50 records have no page of their own.

Arkansas, New Hampshire, Wyoming publish no state WARN list, so layoff coverage there comes from news and court records instead. A zero on those pages would mean the state doesn't publish, not that nothing closed.

Undated records (5,730 in 2026) are counted in totals but excluded from monthly charts — we flag a missing date rather than invent one.

Access and licensing

Public pages are free to read and cite. The record-level file is a subscription.

Free sample

About 30 verified records with addresses, dates, sector, and sources. CSV and Excel.

Get the sample →
Weekly file — $99/month

Every new record each Monday, with all fields above. Single organization; teams and agencies licensed separately.

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Custom pulls

A specific market, sector, or chain cut to your scope, delivered once.

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Terms of use and citation conditions are in the license. If you're citing us in research or reporting, credit Four Lights Analytics LLC and link the page you used — and email [email protected] if you need a cut that isn't published.

Browse the published data

Every page below is free to read and updated weekly.

By state
51 states
By sector
8 sectors
By chain
372 chains
By city
50 cities
Weekly roundups
What moved each week
Briefs
Single-chain write-ups
See a free sample

Act before your competitors see it in trade publications.

Weekly verified closure data across retail, industrial, and logistics — with addresses, source links, and confidence flags. $99/month. Cancel anytime.

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