WARN Act Notice Requirements in 2026: What Employers Must Tell Laid-Off Workers

Workers who lose their jobs in a mass layoff or plant closing are often entitled to advance notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, a federal law that has been on the books since 1988 but is poorly understood by both employees and many employers. The WARN Act requires covered employers to provide 60 days advance notice before a qualifying mass layoff or plant closing, giving workers time to find new employment, apply for unemployment benefits, and adjust their finances before their income stops. When employers fail to comply, workers may be entitled to back pay and benefits for the notice period they did not receive.

Which Employers Must Comply With WARN

The federal WARN Act applies to employers with 100 or more full-time employees, or employers with 100 or more employees who work a combined total of at least 4,000 hours per week, not counting overtime. Part-time workers are included in the employee count for coverage purposes if they work on average more than 20 hours per week. Employers just below the 100-employee threshold are not covered by the federal law, though they may be covered by state mini-WARN laws with lower thresholds.

The law covers private for-profit employers, private nonprofit employers, and quasi-public entities that operate independently from government entities. Federal, state, and local government entities are not covered. Joint employers, such as staffing agencies that place workers at client sites, may both be liable for WARN notice depending on which entity makes the employment decision leading to the layoff. Determining the correct covered employer in complex staffing arrangements requires careful analysis.

What Triggers the WARN Notice Obligation

Two types of employment actions trigger the 60-day notice requirement. A plant closing occurs when a single employment site, or one or more facilities or operating units within a site, is shut down and 50 or more full-time employees experience employment loss during any 30-day period. A mass layoff occurs when a layoff at a single site affects at least 500 full-time workers, or between 50 and 499 workers if that number represents at least 33% of the full-time employees at the site.

Employment loss for WARN purposes includes termination (other than for cause), a layoff exceeding six months, and a reduction of hours of more than 50% during each month of any six-month period. Employees who are offered and accept transfers to other locations, or who receive advance notice and voluntarily quit during the notice period, are generally not counted as experiencing employment loss. The counting rules are specific and technical, and employers sometimes miscalculate whether a planned action actually triggers WARN.

Exceptions to the Full 60-Day Notice Requirement

Three statutory exceptions allow employers to provide less than 60 days notice, though they still must provide as much notice as practicable and must explain why the shorter notice period was necessary. The faltering company exception applies when an employer was actively seeking financing that would have prevented the layoff and had reasonable grounds to believe that providing full notice would have jeopardized the financing effort. This exception applies only to plant closings, not mass layoffs.

The unforeseeable business circumstances exception covers situations where the layoff was caused by a sudden, dramatic, and unexpected action outside the employer's control, such as the sudden cancellation of a major contract, the unexpected withdrawal of a key customer, or a dramatic economic downturn that could not have been reasonably predicted. The natural disaster exception covers plant closings caused by floods, earthquakes, droughts, storms, tidal waves, tsunamis, or similar natural disasters. None of these exceptions eliminate the notice requirement; they only reduce it to as much notice as is practicable.

State Mini-WARN Laws With Stricter Requirements

Several states have enacted their own WARN-type laws that are more protective than the federal law. California's WARN Act covers employers with 75 or more employees and requires 60 days notice for layoffs of 50 or more workers, with no threshold percentage requirement. New York's WARN Act requires 90 days notice, longer than the federal 60 days, and covers employers with 50 or more full-time workers. New Jersey's WARN Act requires 90 days notice for employers with 100 or more employees and has strict rules about severance pay when full notice is not provided.

Illinois, Maryland, Tennessee, and several other states have their own notice requirements that vary in coverage thresholds, notice periods, and required content. When both federal and state WARN laws apply, the employer must satisfy both sets of requirements. A single notice document can satisfy both obligations if it includes all the information required by both laws, but the notice period must meet the longer of the two requirements if they differ.

Remedies When Employers Fail to Provide Proper Notice

An employer that violates the federal WARN Act is liable to each affected worker for back pay and benefits for each day of violation, up to the full 60-day notice period. If notice was provided 30 days before the layoff instead of 60 days, the employer owes 30 days of back pay and benefits per worker. The employer is also liable for civil penalties of up to $500 per day of violation, payable to the local government where the employment loss occurred.

WARN Act claims are brought in federal district court. The statute does not provide for administrative enforcement by the Department of Labor; workers must file their own lawsuits. Class action treatment is common because the violation typically affects many workers similarly situated. Attorneys bring WARN Act class actions on contingency, making it possible for workers to pursue claims without paying upfront fees. Use our notice period calculator to understand your notice rights, and read our guide to severance pay versus unemployment benefits to understand how WARN pay interacts with your other options.