Novanta to cut jobs and move manufacturing out of Cicero

Novanta is cutting jobs at its Cicero medical-tech site and moving manufacturing out of 7279 William Barry Boulevard, shifting work away from one of Onondaga County’s better-known industrial corridors. The move hits production workers based at the Cicero plant and can ripple through the local suppliers, contractors and service firms that support a medical-manufacturing operation.

The company was identified as the Syracuse-area medical technology business behind the change. Novanta’s Cicero footprint has tied a global medtech name to Onondaga County manufacturing, and the decision to relocate production out of town reduces that local presence instead of building on it.

The move lands during a broader run of layoffs across the medtech sector and the wider economy. Challenger, Gray & Christmas said U.S. employers announced 85,979 job cuts in August 2025, up 39% from July and the highest August total since 2020. Newsweek said on Aug. 1, 2025, that companies were expected to lay off 114,000 workers that month.

Cicero has seen similar blows before. Kellogg announced 255 layoffs there in 2017, Albany Molecular said in 2014 it would close a research center in Cicero and eliminate 45 jobs, and JPMorgan Chase closed a check-processing center in 2010, wiping out 32 local positions. The New York State Department of Labor keeps a Central New York page that tracks expansions, contractions and labor disputes, a reminder that the region’s job picture has long moved in cycles of opening and closure.

For Onondaga County, Novanta’s decision is more than a single corporate reshuffle. It removes another manufacturing link from the Syracuse area’s medical-tech footprint and adds to a local record that already includes repeated plant changes, layoffs and relocations in Cicero.