Did Wayfair Lay Off 400 Or 540 Local Workers? Depends Who's Asking.

When online retailer Wayfair announced layoffs of 5% of its global workforce last month, the company told the Boston Business Journal that those cuts affected 400 local employees.

The same day, it told the state that around 540 local employees were affected.

The difference, it seems, comes down to who's doing the asking.

The discrepancy raises questions about the increasingly murky definition of "local" employees — a post-pandemic consequence of widespread remote work. In the Bay State, state officials and employers are very much left to make their own rules on which employees are considered "local," and federal officials, so far, are not offering much guidance.

More on this story from Boston Business Journal