New York’s sudden factory closure costs 287 jobs as unemployment downturn accelerates

New York just keeps losing factories.

After far too many closures earlier this year…

Unfortunately there’s another major loss to report.

More specifically, New York’s manufacturing base took a sizable blow when PepsiCo closed its snack-food facility in Liberty, Sullivan County. (PepsiCo owns Frito-Lay, which includes a lot of snack brands.) The plant had produced the PopCorners brand and employed about 287 people.

The shutdown reflects broader challenges in the snack-food manufacturing world. Companies are grappling with higher ingredient, packaging and energy costs, tighter freight and logistics margins, and shifting U.S. consumer patterns. Trade and supply-chain dynamics continue to add uncertainty to operations at older or less efficient plants.

And of course, underpinning a lot of this is the immediate impacts from the trade war, which has roiled supply chains and damaged US exports as retaliatory tariffs from foreign governments take their toll. It’s logical for companies to trim costs and reduce production as demand falls. Unfortunately, this could set the economy into a downward rhythm that builds momentum as it goes. Companies, noticing weaker demand, start reducing their output and letting workers go to protect their finances. That triggers fear among households, who then spend less and save more out of caution. Lower consumer activity worsens the slowdown, forcing another round of production cuts. The process repeats itself, and the result is heartbreaking — more hardworking Americans losing their jobs and their sense of security.

This closure adds to a wave of food and beverage-sector cut-backs across the Northeast in 2025. Analysts warn that unless cost burdens ease and production networks are re-balanced, more facilities could face a similar fate.

And really, that’s the crux of the problem here – there’s no clear way to reverse the trend given where the economy and US trade policy is. So please join us in wishing the impacted workers well as they seek out new employment in what is honestly looking like a pretty tough job market.

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