One of America’s largest banks plans to lay off more than 700 employees at the company’s West Colfax Building in Lakewood, according to notice provided to the state and to the city.

The notice from PNC Bank came three months after PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC) finalized a merger with Colorado’s FirstBank in a deal worth $4.1 billion.

The takeover made PNC one of the state’s largest banks, with 120 locations.

“As part of that acquisition, PNC has begun the process of consolidating its operations into a single organization,” stated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) letter filed with Colorado on Friday. “Approximately 777 employees in the West Colfax Building are anticipated to be separated from employment, with employment separations expected to start at this location on June 30, 2026.”

The corporate headquarters of FirstBank, also branded as 1stBank, was at 12345 W. Colfax Ave.

Under the WARN Act, employers must notify the state of pending layoffs.

The letter noted that the West Colfax Building will not close, with other employees continuing to work there. PNC bank officials said Denver will be a “strategic Technology location for the enterprise.”

“As part of the integration process, we have done a careful review of roles with FirstBank and PNC and where overlap occurs,” PNC said in statement to The Denver Gazette. “This has resulted in organizational changes, primarily in Colorado. PNC currently is retaining all client-facing roles.”

The statement went on to say that affected employees were encouraged to apply for open PNC roles, and some have already accepted those.

“Through its work with FirstBank, PNC identified a strong, established technology talent base in Colorado and made the decision to establish Denver as a strategic Technology location for the enterprise,” the company said.

Lakewood city officials said they’re poised to help.

“Lakewood’s Economic Development Office is actively coordinating with state and county partners to deploy rapid response services for employees affected by these potential layoffs across the state,” a Lakewood spokesperson said in a statement Monday.

The city noted that PNC/FirstBank has been headquartered in Lakewood for more than 60 years. The bank employs about 4,326 people in the state as of 2025.

In a January news release after the merger was finalized, PNC Chairman and CEO William S. Demchak said it’s the “beginning of a partnership built on shared values and a vision for growth.”

“By combining FirstBank’s strong local relationships with PNC’s national capabilities, we’re poised to deliver even greater opportunities for our customers and communities,” Demchak siad.

PNC has been on an acquisition streak in the last few years that has made the Pennsylvania bank one of the biggest players in retail banking in the country. PNC executives referred to it as “a coast-to-coast banking franchise.”

PNC bought the U.S. operations of Spanish bank BBVA shortly after the pandemic for $11.6 billion. The bank has also been opening new branches in multiple markets, but particularly in the Southwest.

PNC grew to roughly $575 billion in assets.

PNC is typically referred to as a “super regional” bank, a group of large national banks that are significant in size, often hundreds of billions in assets and with hundreds of branches, but are dwarfed in size by the banking giants like Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The latter have size and scale that the super regionals cannot replicate.

The news came on the heels of reports showing Colorado’s labor market contracted in 2025.

The state saw job losses for the first time since the pandemic last year, according to annual benchmarking data released by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment on Wednesday. The state lost 11,700 jobs in 2025 at an annual rate of -0.4%. 

Job growth across the nation was relatively flat at 0.1%, according to the report. 

The last time the state has seen job losses has often followed recessions, such as in 2008 with the housing crisis and in 2002 following the dot-com bubble. 

The benchmarking for 2025 shows that Colorado’s job market saw losses instead of gains and more people have left the labor force. This January, Colorado’s labor force participation rate fell to 66.8%, down from revised numbers for January 2025 at 67.6%.

With fewer people in the workforce, federal data shows the state’s 2025 unemployment rate was revised from 4.5% down to 4%.

Denver Gazette business reporter Bernadette Berdychowski and the Associated Press contributed to this report.