- Layoff notice date in writing
- Pay stubs showing daily wage
- Number of employees laid off (ask HR)
The federal WARN Act — Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, 29 U.S.C. §§ 2101–2109 — has been in effect since 1989. It is one of the most widely violated employment laws in the country, and it is one of the most under-claimed. Workers who received less than 60 days advance notice of a mass layoff or plant closing, and who never pursued the resulting back-pay claim, may have left months of wages uncollected. This is particularly common in the media, retail, and tech industries, where large layoffs in 2022–2024 frequently involved notice periods measured in days, not the legally required 60.
Who the federal WARN Act actually covers — and the state laws that go further
Federal WARN applies to employers with 100 or more full-time employees. Mass layoff triggers: 500+ workers laid off at a single site, or 50–499 workers if they constitute at least 33% of the workforce at that site. Plant closing trigger: permanent or temporary shutdown affecting 50+ workers at a single site.
Several states have enacted more protective equivalents:
- California: Cal-WARN (Labor Code § 1400–1408) covers employers with 75+ employees. Triggers: layoff of 50+ workers at a single location over 30 days. Notice required: 60 days. Cal-WARN specifically includes temporary layoffs expected to last more than 6 months, which federal WARN does not.
- New York: NY WARN Act (N.Y. Lab. Law §§ 860–860-i) covers employers with 50+ full-time employees. Triggers: 25+ workers (if 33% of workforce) at a single site; or 250+ workers regardless of percentage. Notice required: 90 days — longer than the federal 60-day requirement. New York also covers part-time employees in its employee count thresholds under some circumstances.
- New Jersey: NJ WARN Act (N.J.S.A. 34:21-1 et seq.), as amended in 2023, covers employers with 100+ full-time employees and requires 90 days notice. The 2023 amendment also added a severance entitlement: employers who don't provide adequate notice now owe one week's pay per year of service (up to 9 months) even if they otherwise wouldn't have paid severance.
- Illinois: Illinois WARN Act (820 ILCS 65) covers employers with 75+ employees, requires 60 days notice, and uses a 25-worker trigger at a single site.
What happens when notice is deficient: the back-pay calculation
If your employer failed to provide adequate WARN notice (federal: 60 days; NY: 90 days; NJ: 90 days), each affected employee is entitled to back pay and benefits for each day of violation up to the required notice period, minus any notice that was given. If a California company employing 200 people gives 10 days notice and then shuts down, each worker may be owed up to 50 days of back pay (60 days federal minus 10 days provided) plus 50 days of the value of benefits — health insurance, pension contributions, life insurance. These claims are calculated per employee, not as a capped pool, which makes WARN violations in large layoffs potentially significant for the affected employer.
Employers can offset WARN liability against any severance voluntarily paid. If an employer paid 6 weeks of severance and violated WARN by 8 weeks, the net WARN liability per worker is 2 weeks. If severance equals or exceeds the WARN violation period, WARN damages may be fully offset. This is one reason severance negotiations sometimes involve WARN exposure: an employer who knows it has an 8-week WARN violation might offer 8 weeks of severance partly to extinguish that liability through offset.
The WARN Act exceptions employers claim — and how courts have treated them
Federal WARN has three statutory exceptions to the notice requirement: the "faltering company" exception (employer was seeking financing and notice would have jeopardized that effort), "unforeseeable business circumstances" (sudden, dramatic event the employer couldn't reasonably anticipate), and "natural disaster." The unforeseeable business circumstances exception was widely invoked during COVID-19 mass layoffs in 2020. Courts have since addressed many of those claims: while courts generally accepted the exception for immediate March–April 2020 layoffs triggered by the actual pandemic onset, employers who delayed layoffs until mid-2020 after the initial emergency had passed faced more scrutiny on whether the circumstances remained "unforeseeable" at the time of the layoff. If your layoff occurred in late 2020 or beyond and your employer claimed the unforeseeable-business-circumstances exception, that claim may be worth evaluating with an attorney.
Frequently Asked Questions
- My company had 80 employees and laid off 40 of us with 2 weeks notice. Does WARN apply?
- Federal WARN requires 100+ employees, so 80 employees doesn't meet the federal threshold. But check your state law. California (75+ employees), Illinois (75+ employees), New York (50+ full-time employees), and New Jersey (100+ employees) all have mini-WARN laws that would apply to an 80-person company in those states. At 40 workers laid off, California and Illinois mini-WARN's 50-worker trigger would be met, and you would potentially have a claim if your employer has 75+ employees and didn't give 60 days notice. If you're in another state without a mini-WARN law and your employer has fewer than 100 employees, federal WARN likely doesn't apply — but a state employment attorney can confirm definitively based on your specific facts.
- I signed a severance agreement. Did I waive my WARN Act claim?
- Potentially, yes — this is the most important practical consequence of severance agreement signatures. Most severance agreements include a broad release of "all claims" against the employer, which typically includes WARN Act claims. Before signing, calculate whether your WARN claim has meaningful value: how many days short of the required notice were you given, multiplied by your daily wage and daily benefit value. If that number exceeds your severance offer by a significant margin, consulting an employment attorney before signing is worth the cost. Some attorneys will review a severance agreement for a flat fee; others take WARN cases on contingency if multiple workers are similarly situated, making class action treatment possible. Once signed, the waiver is generally enforceable.
- Can remote workers file a WARN Act claim based on the office they're assigned to, even if they never went there?
- Yes. For WARN Act counting purposes, remote workers are generally assigned to the office or work site they report to for administrative purposes, not necessarily where they physically work. The DOL's interpretive guidance and several court decisions have clarified that remote workers count toward a site's employee threshold based on their administrative assignment, not their physical location. If you were administratively based out of a Chicago office that closed, and 50+ workers were similarly based out of that office, the site-specific WARN triggers apply to that location — even if you worked from home in Wisconsin. This became particularly relevant in the post-2020 period as many large layoffs affected workers who had never (or rarely) been to the assigned office.