Arizona’s state workforce network is staging job fairs and career workshops for the workers laid off from Lucid‘s Casa Grande plant, Pinal Central reported on Friday.
The response puts a local number on a cut so far been discussed mainly in national terms.
Lucid‘s June decision to eliminate the second production shift at its AMP-1 factory in Casa Grande affected more than 700 employees, along with about 400 contracted workers.
Over 1,000 people were affected, according to figures cited by Arizona@Work Pinal County.
The company cut the second shift at its plant, months after starting it.
Casa Grande is a company town in the making, and AMP-1 is its largest advanced-manufacturing employer.
The ‘Get Hired’ events
Arizona@Work Pinal County, part of the state’s workforce development network, is running two public “Get Hired” events to connect the displaced workers with employers that are hiring.
The first is on July 23 at Central Arizona College’s Signal Peak Campus, with workshops from 10 a.m. to noon and a career fair from 1 to 4 p.m.
The second is on Wednesday, 19 August at the Casa Grande Community Recreation Center, with workshops from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and a fair from 2 to 5 p.m.
Both are open to the public, and the agency said additional employers would be named closer to the dates.
“Arizona@Work Pinal County is committed to supporting every individual impacted by these layoffs,” said Joel Millman, director of Pinal County economic and workforce development, who also leads the county’s Arizona@Work office. “Helping people navigate career transitions is exactly what our workforce system is built to do.”
Free help for job seekers
Alongside the fairs, the agency is offering resume help, interview preparation, career coaching and training referrals at no cost.
Workers can request one-on-one sessions through a job-seeker form on the Arizona@Work website, after which a career planner makes contact to map out next steps.
“Whether someone needs help updating a resume, preplaring for interviews, exploring training opportunities or finding their next job, we’re here to help,” said Kaeden Peterson, a business and economic development strategist for the office. He urged affected workers to make contact early.
The workshops are designed to run before each career fair, so attendees can sharpen a resume or rehearse interview answers in the same visit that they meet employers.
Part of a deeper retrenchment
The Casa Grande cuts are the local face of a broader retrenchment. Lucid announced a reduction of about 18% of its US workforce in June — its second mass layoff of the year — and eliminated the chief operating officer role.
New chief executive Silvio Napoli, who took over on 1 June, has cast the moves as an effort to simplify the company and align output with demand.
It is the EV maker’s fourth formal workforce reduction since 2023 and its second this year.
The Arizona cuts fall under federal WARN rules, while Lucid must file a separate state notice in California covering its Newark headquarters.
In its filing on the plan, Lucid put the annualised cost savings at about $158 million against roughly $32 million in cash charges, with the reduction due to complete by the end of the third quarter.
A company spokesperson called the layoffs “difficult decisions taken to align production with demand, reduce inventory, and adapt to declining market conditions.”
The squeeze has since widened. EV exclusively reported that Lucid‘s board is slowing its European expansion and weighing cuts of up to 40% of its regional staff by the end of September.
Lucid has also missed second-quarter delivery expectations, lost its CFO as shares plunged and drawn $800 million from its Saudi credit line.
It has hired restructuring firm AlixPartners in what one insider called Lucid’s most serious reset since its founding — a shake-up Baird has judged more consequential than the delivery miss.
A town that bet on Lucid
The layoffs land in a community that bet heavily on Lucid. Casa Grande and Pinal County have backed the automaker since it chose the city in 2016, when it announced a roughly $700 million plant and up to 2,000 jobs alongside then-Governor Doug Ducey.
Local governments financed the plant’s land through bonds and leased it to the company, added some $8 million in local incentives on top of state grants, and cast Lucid as the anchor tenant of a former farming and mining town.
AMP-1 became North America’s first purpose-built greenfield EV plant when it began producing the Lucid Air in September 2021. The campus grew again with a roughly 1,300-acre expansion in 2022, sized for a much larger operation than the plant runs today.
That history is what gives the current cut its local weight. The county tied its bonds, land and incentives to a plant that was supposed to keep adding jobs, not shed them.
What local officials say
Local officials struck a measured note.
Casa Grande Mayor Lisa Navarro Fitzgibbons said she was disappointed by the cuts, while the county pointed to openings across advanced manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, construction and public service as evidence its economy still offers alternatives.
Arizona@Work framed the fairs as part of that pivot — a way to keep laid-off workers in the local labour force rather than lose them to other regions.
