Here's a fun exercise in corporate transparency: Block Inc., the Oakland-based payments giant run by Jack Dorsey, announced over a month ago that it was slashing 4,000 jobs. That's a massive cut by any measure. And yet, more than four weeks later, we still have no idea how many of those layoffs hit the Bay Area.

Let that sink in. A major local employer axes thousands of workers, and the public — the community that housed these employees, educated their kids, collected their taxes, and filled their commutes — gets radio silence on the local impact.

Now, let's be clear: companies have every right to restructure. If Block determined it was bloated and inefficient, trimming headcount is a legitimate business decision. We're not in the business of telling private companies how to allocate capital. Markets reward efficiency, and sometimes that means painful corrections after years of overhiring — something half of Silicon Valley is guilty of post-2021.

But here's where it gets frustrating. When you're headquartered in Oakland and you're one of the region's significant employers, the local workforce impact isn't some minor footnote. City planners, small businesses, landlords, and transit agencies all need to understand the downstream effects. Are we talking about 500 local jobs? 2,000? The difference matters enormously for a Bay Area economy that's already navigating a fragile recovery from the tech correction.

California's WARN Act requires companies to give 60 days' notice for mass layoffs, and those filings are supposed to be public. So where are the numbers? Either Block is slow-walking the disclosures, structuring the cuts to minimize reporting requirements, or the information is buried in bureaucratic limbo. None of those options inspire confidence.

Transparency isn't just a buzzword companies slap on their corporate values page. If you're going to reshape the local labor market, the least you can do is tell people what's coming. Bay Area workers — and the communities that depend on them — deserve better than a black box.