Haas Automation, one of Ventura County's biggest employers, is sending 73 jobs from its Oxnard headquarters to a newly built manufacturing complex in Henderson, Nevada, with the transition set to be complete by the end of 2026. The company says the shift involves assemblers, operators, and machinists who will relocate to Nevada without any interruption to their employment, and that the move does not represent layoffs.
The relocation was formalized in a California WARN Act filing submitted on August 19, 2026, which set November 2, 2026 as the effective date for the job transitions, according to CaliforniaWarn. As reported by the New York Post, Haas Automation grew from a small machine shop in greater Los Angeles into one of the world's largest machine tool builders, and the company has framed the Nevada move as enabling future growth rather than a retreat from California.
Peter Zierhut, vice president of outside operations for Haas Automation, told the Post that Nevada proved more business-friendly than other locations the company considered. He described the process of standing up the Henderson facility as easy and wonderful, according to the same report.
A Six-Year Build Finally Comes Online
The Henderson facility has been in the works for six years, per the Post's reporting, and construction records show why it took so long. Initial earthwork began in 2020 with an original completion target of 2022, but supply chain bottlenecks, pandemic disruptions, and rising material costs pushed the project's finish into late 2026, according to Construction Equipment Guide. The Whittier, California-based contractor Oltmans Construction Co. handled the build, which required moving more than one million cubic yards of soil to elevate the building pads across the 277-acre site.
Figures on the finished facility's size vary slightly depending on the source: the Post reported the Henderson complex as a 2.5 million-square-foot manufacturing facility, while Construction Equipment Guide describes it as 2.4 million square feet across three industrial buildings. Either way, the project represents a capital investment exceeding $400 million, according to the same trade publication. The complex includes a lobby, demo room, event center, machine shop, and full production areas, the Post reported.
Why Nevada Made the Cut
Nevada's pitch to Haas Automation rested heavily on financial incentives. In March 2022, the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development approved $10.5 million in state tax abatements for the company, tied to creating 500 jobs paying an average hourly wage of $24.04 within two years and 1,400 jobs within five years, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. State records show Nevada has approved incentives tied to as many as 2,500 jobs over a ten-year window, per the Post's reporting.
Nevada also has no personal or corporate state income tax, a structural advantage the Post noted in its coverage of the move. That contrasts with California, which imposes an 8.84% corporate income tax rate and personal income tax tiers reaching as high as 13.3%, according to the Tax Foundation. To support the influx of manufacturing jobs, the City of Henderson opened a state-funded Center of Excellence training facility in August 2023 in partnership with the College of Southern Nevada, offering vocational instruction in CNC machine operation, according to the City of Henderson.
Oxnard's Standing Amid the Shift
Haas Automation's headquarters remains at 2800 Sturgis Road in Oxnard, where the company employs roughly 1,700 people and ranks among Ventura County's largest employers. The company said last year that it remains committed to Ventura County even as it builds out its Nevada operations. Oxnard planning documents have placed Haas Automation in the 1,000-to-4,999 employee bracket among the city's top private-sector employers, alongside major health systems, per the City of Oxnard.
The company, which makes large-scale CNC machines and tools, has also weathered recent turbulence at its California plant. In April 2025, Haas Automation announced temporary production cutbacks and overtime freezes at the Oxnard facility due to sharp declines in machine tool orders tied to trade tariffs, according to the company's own statement posted on its website. It's not yet clear from available records whether that tariff-driven slowdown played any role in the decision to shift jobs to Nevada, and the company has not tied the two developments together in its public statements.
A Company Built on Disruption
Founder Gene Haas started the business in 1983 by inventing the first fully automatic 5C collet indexer, then launched the VF-1 vertical machining center in 1988 for under $50,000, a price point that helped bring automated CNC equipment to small job shops and vocational schools nationwide, according to Industrial Equipment News. The Oxnard headquarters campus today spans five buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet and is capable of producing more than 1,300 CNC machining centers and lathes per month, the outlet reported.
Hoodline first reported on the Henderson facility's construction back in September 2024, when the 2.4 million-square-foot project was still underway. With the plant now reaching completion and jobs beginning to shift this year, the years-long buildout appears to be entering its operational phase, even as the company insists its Southern California roots remain intact.
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