Employees say the notices are going out to about 30,000 employees, or about 7% of the company's workforce. The employees receiving the notices work in many parts of the company, including the UnitedHealthcare Employer & Individual commercial health coverage department.

Federal law requires large employers to submit Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notices, or layoff notices, to state labor departments when they plan to implement large layoffs. At press time, the WARN notice sites managed by four states where UnitedHealth has offices — Minnesota, California, Florida and New York — had not posted any recent WARN notices for UnitedHealth or its major divisions.

Related: UnitedHealth's PBM will pass 100% of rebates on to clients: Will more big PBMs follow?

UnitedHealth reported $5.8 billion in net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 on $101 billion in revenue, but the number of enrollees in major medical plans the company insured or administered fell to 51 million, from 53 million people at the end of 2023. Executives said health claim costs were higher than they had hoped at the beginning of the year.

^{The company faced questions in 2024 from customers, public officials and its own shareholders about reports about use of aggressive care management and claim review strategies, including an automated claim denial process with what critics said were very high error rates.}

^{The company has also been coping with the impact of an attack on its Change Healthcare health data infrastructure business. The attack may have affected the protected health information of 190 million people.}