University of Southern California Layoff — October 2025

The article reports that the University of Southern California's Roski School of Art and Design issued layoff notices to multiple full-time faculty members in August 2025, including associate professor David Kelley who received a layoff letter dated Aug. 15 and was removed from university system access days later. The precise number of full-time faculty laid off is unclear; students and faculty describe several instructors being let go and remaining faculty absorbing additional duties such as advisement and thesis supervision. The piece notes USC is subject to California's 60-day written notice requirement for mass layoffs of 50 or more employees and that Kelley was offered a lump-sum payout in lieu of notice. University leadership (Interim President Beong-Soo Kim) met with Roski faculty about finances in late July, while the Roski Dean did not directly communicate personnel changes to faculty according to sources.

University of Southern California disclosed this layoff in an official WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice recorded by the CA state workforce agency on September 14, 2025. The notice covers 158 employees in Los Angeles, CA (Los Angeles County), with the layoff effective October 3, 2025.

The state lists each affected employee separately by work location, so this filing spans 3 CA communities: Eastlake Ave Los Angeles, Los Angeles, San Pablo Street Los Angeles.

That is roughly 0.4% of the 40,000 people University of Southern California employs.

LayoffTalk has tracked 41 layoff events at University of Southern California since July 2023, including 1,065 jobs documented in official WARN filings, with 28 additional events known from news reporting.