[deja vu]

Not great news...

State Farm to cut 600 jobs in Kalamazoo County
By Al Jones, via MLive
May 04, 2017

PORTAGE, MI -- State Farm's operations in Kalamazoo are among 11 U.S. locations slated to be closed over the next four years. The giant insurance company has a 150,000-square-foot claims center at 5538 Portage Road. The location had approximately 675 workers handling insurance claims for Michigan and Indiana in 2011, with plans to grow that. The city of Portage indicates that are one point the business had about 900 employees. But a company source indicated that it presently has about 600.

"Today, over 600 employees learned that they will no longer be employed in Kalamazoo County," Michigan Sen. Margaret O'Brien stated in a press release "Their lives and their families' lives are changing, and my heart goes out to them."

The location, which opened with one building in June 1998 and spread into a second adjacent building in January 2002, has grown exponentially over the years as the insurance company consolidated its claims adjustment work from various Midwest locations. The Portage location (which the Bloomington, Ill.-based insurance company calls its Kalamazoo location) is one of three sites that the company indicates it will close sometime in 2019. No specifics were provided.