WARN Act Requirements for Employers by State
WARN Act rules for employers: the 100-employee threshold, 60-day notice, plant closing and mass layoff triggers, penalties, and mini-WARN laws by state.
WARN Act Requirements for Employers by State
The federal 60-day layoff notice rule, who it actually covers, what triggers it, what the penalties are, and a state-by-state table of which states add their own mini-WARN law and which rely on federal law alone.
The WARN Act requires covered employers to give 60 calendar days of written notice before a plant closing or a mass layoff. The threshold is 100 employees, which is the fact most searches for this topic are actually looking for, because it determines whether the law applies to them at all. Most small businesses are below it and owe no WARN notice.
The complication is that WARN is a floor, not a ceiling. States can and do go further, lowering the employee threshold, extending the notice period, and in one case requiring severance by statute. So the real question for any employer planning a reduction in force is not just whether federal WARN applies, but which state laws apply to the people affected. This page answers both, with a state-by-state table.
What the WARN Act Requires
Covered employers must give at least 60 calendar days of advance written notice before a plant closing or a mass layoff. Notice goes to three audiences: the affected employees or their union representative, the state dislocated worker unit, and the chief elected official of the local government where the affected site sits.
What WARN does not do matters as much. It does not prohibit layoffs, does not require severance, does not require any particular selection process, and does not override at-will employment. It is a notice statute. An employer that gives proper notice and then proceeds has complied, however unwelcome the outcome for the people affected.
Note also who enforces it. The Department of Labor publishes compliance materials but has no enforcement authority here. WARN claims are brought by employees, their representatives, or local governments in federal district court (U.S. Department of Labor).
Which Employers Are Covered
Federal WARN covers private for-profit and nonprofit employers with 100 or more employees, excluding part-time employees, or alternatively 100 or more employees who in the aggregate work at least 4,000 hours a week, excluding overtime. Federal, state, and local government entities are not covered.
The counting rules are where most employers get their answer, and they are more forgiving than they look.
The definition of part-time is the piece to read twice. For WARN purposes, part-time means someone averaging fewer than 20 hours a week or someone employed for fewer than 6 of the preceding 12 months, so a recent full-time hire is a part-time employee under this test. Those people do not count toward the 100-employee threshold, but they are entitled to receive the notice if a covered event occurs.
Closing vs Mass Layoff
Being a covered employer is not enough on its own. A specific event has to happen, and there are three that qualify.
| Trigger | What it is | Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| Plant closing | Permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site, or of one or more facilities or operating units within a site | 50 or more employment losses in any 30-day period |
| Mass layoff, large | Reduction in force that is not a closing | 500 or more employment losses at a single site in any 30-day period |
| Mass layoff, percentage | Reduction in force that is not a closing | 50 to 499 employment losses that are at least 33 percent of active full-time employees at that site |
| Aggregation rule | Two or more smaller actions within a 90-day period | Added together unless the employer shows separate and distinct causes |
The aggregation rule in the last row is the one that catches people. An employer who separates 30 people in March and 30 more in May, hoping to stay under the trigger, will have both actions counted together unless it can show the two decisions had genuinely separate and distinct causes. Structuring a reduction to defeat the threshold is exactly the fact pattern the rule exists to address.
Who Gets the Notice
Three recipients, each with different required content. Affected employees receive it individually unless they are represented, in which case the union representative receives it. The state dislocated worker unit and the chief elected official of the local government receive their own versions.
The employee notice must state whether the action is permanent or temporary, whether the whole site is closing, the expected date of the first separation and the individual employee's separation date, whether bumping rights exist, and the name and phone number of a company contact who can provide further information. The notice to the state and local officials adds the number of affected employees by job title and, where applicable, the union name and contact.
Delivery method matters more than employers expect. Any reasonable method designed to ensure receipt at least 60 days in advance is acceptable, but a notice posted on a bulletin board or inserted into a pay envelope without more is generally not sufficient. Use a method that produces a record.
Mini-WARN Laws by State
About twenty states have some form of WARN-style statute, but only about sixteen impose a mandatory advance-notice duty beyond federal law. That gap is why published counts range from thirteen to twenty depending on the source: a few states have statutes that merely encourage voluntary notice or require reporting after the fact.
These states impose their own mandatory notice obligations on top of federal WARN.
| State | Employer threshold | Layoff trigger | Notice period | State agency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 75 or more | 50 or more at a site in 30 days; also covers relocations | 60 days | Employment Development Department |
| New York | 50 or more | 25 or more where they are 33 percent of the site, or 250 or more | 90 days | NYS Department of Labor |
| New Jersey | 100 or more statewide | 50 or more statewide in 30 days | 90 days, plus mandatory severance | NJ Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development |
| Illinois | 75 or more | 25 or more where they are 33 percent of the site, or 250 or more | 60 days | Dept. of Commerce and Economic Opportunity |
| Maryland | 50 or more | 15 or more | 60 days | Dept. of Labor, Division of Workforce Development |
| Washington | 50 or more in the state | 50 or more in 30 days; not limited to one site | 60 days | Employment Security Department |
| Ohio | 100 or more | Federal definitions | 60 days | Dept. of Job and Family Services |
| Nebraska | 100 or more | 100 or more; no 33 percent rule | 60 days | Dept. of Labor |
| Iowa | 25 or more | 25 or more at a site | 30 days | Iowa Workforce Development |
| Delaware | 100 or more | Federal-style triggers | 60 days | Dept. of Labor |
| Hawaii | 50 or more | 50 or more | 60 days, plus severance in defined cases | Dept. of Labor and Industrial Relations |
| Maine | 100 or more | Relocation or closing | 60 days, plus severance in defined cases | Dept. of Labor |
| New Hampshire | 100 or more | Federal-style triggers | 60 days | Employment Security |
| Tennessee | 50 to 99 | 50 or more in 3 months | 60 days | Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development |
| Vermont | 50 or more | 50 or more | 45 to 60 days | Dept. of Labor |
| Wisconsin | 50 or more | 25 or more where they are 25 percent, or 500 or more | 60 days | Dept. of Workforce Development |
Every other state relies on federal WARN alone. If you searched for the WARN Act in one of these states, that sentence is the answer: there is no additional state notice statute, the federal 100-employee threshold applies, and 60 days is the required notice period.
| State | State layoff notice law |
|---|---|
| Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia | No state law. Federal WARN applies. |
| North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama | No state law. Federal WARN applies. |
| Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana | No state law. Federal WARN applies. |
| Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Idaho | No state law. Federal WARN applies. |
| Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota | No state law. Federal WARN applies; some require filing with the state workforce agency. |
| Oregon, Alaska | No separate state statute. Federal WARN applies, with state filing requirements. |
| Michigan | Statute encourages voluntary notice only. No penalty, no private right of action. Federal WARN applies. |
| Minnesota | Voluntary notice plus a reporting duty. No mandatory advance notice. Federal WARN applies. |
| Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts | See note below; Massachusetts requires filing at 50 employees. |
| West Virginia, Mississippi, Nebraska excepted, others | No state law unless listed in the table above. |
Two states need a word beyond the table. Massachusetts does not have a full mini-WARN statute in the California mould, which is why some sources say it has no state law, but the state does operate a WARN filing process at a 50-employee threshold through its rapid response program, so the practical answer is that a filing is expected. Our Massachusetts WARN guide reconciles the contradiction in full (Mass.gov).
Michigan has a statute, but it only encourages voluntary notice and carries no penalty or private right of action, so mandatory notice in Michigan comes from federal law alone.
California has its own detailed rules on relocations and on which sites count, covered in our California WARN Act guide. Its threshold of 75 catches a large number of mid-sized employers who assume the federal 100 protects them.
New Jersey is the national outlier: it is the only state where severance is required by statute rather than by agreement, at one week of pay per year of service, and an employer who misses the 90-day notice owes four additional weeks on top. That turns a notice failure into a direct and calculable payroll cost. The New Jersey WARN guide works through the severance calculation by length of service.
New York is the broadest of the group in scope rather than in cost. It covers employers at 50, requires 90 days, sets the mass layoff trigger at 25 people, and adds two triggers federal law does not have at all: a relocation of operations and a sustained reduction in work hours, either of which can create an obligation without anyone being terminated. Our New York WARN guide covers the four triggers and the automation disclosure the state added to its filing form.
Washington is the newest, effective in mid-2025 and amended again in 2026. Its distinguishing feature is that a mass layoff is not limited to a single site, so separations across several locations in the state are added together, which defeats the usual approach of distributing a reduction to stay under the threshold. The Washington WARN guide covers the multi-site count and the restriction on including employees who are on state paid family and medical leave.
Two more rows are worth pulling out of the table. Iowa covers employers at just 25 employees with a 30-day notice period, the lowest coverage threshold in the country. And Maryland requires notice at 15 separations, well below the federal 50.
Exceptions to the Notice
Three exceptions can shorten the 60-day period. None of them eliminates the notice, and the employer carries the burden of proving the exception applies.
| Exception | When it applies | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Faltering company | Employer was actively seeking capital or business that would have avoided or postponed the shutdown, and reasonably believed notice would have precluded getting it | Plant closings only; does not apply to mass layoffs |
| Unforeseeable business circumstances | A sudden, dramatic, and unexpected condition outside the employer's control | Read narrowly; a foreseeable downturn does not qualify |
| Natural disaster | Flood, earthquake, storm, drought, or similar event | The loss must be a direct result of the disaster |
Penalties for No Notice
An employer that fails to give required notice owes each affected employee back pay and the value of lost benefits for each day of violation, capped at 60 days. On top of that sits a civil penalty payable to local government, and the possibility of attorney fees.
Two practical points. Liability can be reduced by wages already paid for the period and by voluntary, unconditional payments the employer was not otherwise legally obligated to make, which is one reason severance is often paid in a WARN-adjacent situation. And because enforcement runs through federal court rather than an agency, the realistic exposure includes litigation cost regardless of the merits.
State penalties stack on top. Washington, for example, adds a civil penalty of up to $500 a day for failing to notify the state agency alongside a private right of action (Washington Employment Security Department).
Under the Threshold
If you are below every applicable threshold, WARN imposes no notice obligation on you. That is the honest answer, and it applies to most small businesses. It is not the same as having no obligations, and the ones that remain carry more immediate financial risk than WARN does.
The final paycheck deadline is the one that most often produces an unexpected bill, because several states require payment on the separation date and impose daily penalties after that. Our guide to the final paycheck for a terminated employee covers the state-by-state deadlines.
Access removal is the second thing that goes wrong, and it goes wrong quietly. Email, systems, building, vehicle, and customer data all need closing on the separation date, which is easy to run from an IT offboarding checklist and almost impossible to run from memory on a day when everyone is preoccupied with the conversations.
The rest is process. A written termination letter and a documented offboarding sequence, with access removal handled from a checklist rather than from memory.
One thing worth doing even when no law requires it: give notice anyway where you reasonably can. A small employer separating six people has no WARN duty, but a fortnight of warning costs nothing legally and changes how the remaining team reads the decision. The people who stay are watching how the people who leave are treated, and that is the part of a reduction that shows up in retention six months later.
Running the paperwork as an assigned workflow rather than an email thread is exactly what FirstHR does: separation documents go out for e-signature with a dated record, offboarding tasks are assigned and tracked to completion, and the record stays attached to the employee profile alongside the rest of their history. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a law firm and not a payroll provider, so it does not determine WARN coverage, calculate severance, or issue final pay. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Layoff Compliance Timeline
Working backwards from the separation date is the only way this stays on schedule. In states requiring 90 days, shift every step 30 days earlier.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the WARN Act?
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act is a federal law requiring covered employers to give 60 calendar days of advance written notice before a plant closing or a mass layoff. It applies to private for-profit and nonprofit employers with 100 or more employees, and government entities are not covered. Notice goes to affected employees or their union representative, to the state dislocated worker unit, and to the chief elected official of the local government where the site is located. The purpose is to give workers time to look for other work or enter retraining before the job ends. The law does not prohibit layoffs or require severance; it only requires notice. Enforcement runs through federal district court rather than through the Department of Labor. This is general information, not legal advice.
Does Texas have a WARN Act?
No. Texas has no state mini-WARN law, so only the federal WARN Act applies. That means the federal thresholds govern in full: 100 or more employees, 60 days of written notice, and the federal definitions of plant closing and mass layoff. A Texas employer with fewer than 100 employees generally has no advance-notice obligation under WARN at all, though other obligations such as the state final paycheck deadline still apply. The same answer holds for Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, Alabama, and Kansas among others. If you operate in more than one state, check each one separately, because employees working in a state with its own law can pull you into that law even if your headquarters is elsewhere.
How many employees do you need for the WARN Act to apply?
One hundred. Federal WARN covers employers with 100 or more employees, excluding part-time employees, or alternatively 100 or more employees who in the aggregate work at least 4,000 hours per week, not counting overtime. For counting purposes, part-time means someone who averages fewer than 20 hours a week or who has been employed for fewer than 6 of the preceding 12 months. Those employees do not count toward the 100-employee threshold, but they are entitled to receive notice if a covered event happens. Several states set the bar lower: New York and Washington cover employers at 50, California and Illinois at 75, and Iowa at 25. A business below every applicable threshold has no WARN notice obligation, but still has state final pay, benefits continuation, and recordkeeping obligations. This is general information, not legal advice.
What triggers a WARN notice?
Three scenarios. A plant closing is the permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site of employment, or of one or more facilities or operating units within a single site, resulting in employment loss for 50 or more employees during any 30-day period. A mass layoff that is not a closing triggers notice when it causes employment loss for 500 or more employees at a single site, or for 50 to 499 employees where that group makes up at least 33 percent of the active workforce at that site. There is also an aggregation rule: separate smaller actions within a 90-day period are added together unless the employer can show they resulted from separate and distinct causes. That aggregation rule is what catches employers who try to stay under the threshold by splitting a reduction into stages.
What are the penalties for violating the WARN Act?
An employer that fails to give required notice is liable to each affected employee for back pay and the value of benefits for each day of violation, up to a maximum of 60 days. The liability can be reduced by wages paid during the period, by voluntary and unconditional payments not required by any legal obligation, and by certain payments to third parties on the employee's behalf. Separately, the employer can face a civil penalty of up to $500 for each day of violation payable to the affected unit of local government, which is avoided if the employer pays each affected employee in full within three weeks of the closing or layoff. A court may also award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party. The Department of Labor does not enforce WARN; claims are brought in federal district court.
Which states have their own mini-WARN law?
Roughly twenty states have some form of WARN-style statute, but only about sixteen impose a mandatory advance-notice obligation beyond federal law. The mandatory group includes California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin, Ohio, Washington, and Nebraska. New Jersey is the strictest, requiring 90 days of notice and mandatory severance of one week of pay per year of service. New York also requires 90 days. Washington and New York cover employers at 50 employees, California and Illinois at 75, and Iowa at 25. A few states, including Michigan and Minnesota, have statutes that encourage voluntary notice or require reporting without imposing a mandatory advance-notice duty, which is why published counts of mini-WARN states range from thirteen to twenty.
Can you shorten the 60-day notice period?
In limited circumstances the notice period can be shortened, but the notice itself is never eliminated. Three exceptions exist: the faltering company exception, which applies only to plant closings and only where the employer was actively seeking capital or business that would have avoided or postponed the shutdown and reasonably believed that giving notice would have precluded obtaining it; unforeseeable business circumstances, meaning a sudden dramatic condition outside the employer's control; and natural disaster. In each case the employer must give as much notice as is practicable and must state in the notice the basis for reducing the period. The employer bears the burden of proving the exception applies, and courts read all three narrowly. Assuming an exception applies without documenting it at the time is a common and expensive mistake.
Does the WARN Act apply to remote employees?
It can, and this is one of the least settled areas of the law. WARN counts employment losses at a single site of employment, and remote employees are generally assigned to the site from which their work is assigned, to which they report, or which serves as their home base, rather than to their home address. That means a fully remote workforce may aggregate to a headquarters or regional office for threshold purposes even though nobody physically works there. Several states have addressed remote work in their own guidance, and some state laws count employees statewide rather than by site, which changes the answer again. If a reduction involves remote workers across several states, the analysis needs to be done for each applicable law before the decision is announced. This is general information, not legal advice.