After suffering through more than three years of losses, Alpha is burning through cash and is struggling to service its $3.3 billion debt burden.

For workers, that means more closed mines. Last week, Alpha warned nearly 300 workers in southeastern Kentucky and Virginia that it expected to close six mines and a processing plant.

“We’ve been navigating through a long down cycle,” Alpha’s chief executive, Kevin S. Crutchfield, said in a recent conference call. “In fact, it’s become quite apparent that market conditions have deteriorated further since the beginning of the year. Frankly, these factors are outside of our control.”

But many if not most other large coal companies are not in much better shape, energy analysts say, and the industry must endure a painful reorganization, much like those that the steel and auto industries went through in recent decades.

“It’s actually pretty simple,” said Brandon Blossman, managing director for research at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Company, the energy investment and banking firm. “These guys go through bankruptcy, they clean up their balance sheets and they continue to produce coal.”

But miners being laid off here are left with few options.

After several decades working as a miner, Patrick Lawson has paid off the mortgage on his trailer home, and he is proud of his antique glassware collection and a modest nest egg he thought he could live on after working a few more years. But he has several badly damaged fingers, has lost much of his hearing and now is facing shoulder surgery from mine work, and said that his career options after his job ends at the Camp Creek mine in a few weeks were pretty limited.

“I may be working somewhere for minimum wage before it’s over,” Mr. Lawson said with a shrug while enjoying a cool breeze on his front porch. “I don’t think the coal industry will ever be back to what it was.”