ComplianceFederal law quoted from the CFR and the US Code; all 51 jurisdictions checked at official sources, 9 September 2026

WARN Act by State: The 14 States That Add Real Obligations, and the 5 That Only Look Like It

Federal WARN turns on four numbers: 100 employees makes you covered, 60 days is the notice, 50 employment losses in 30 days is the trigger, and 33% of the site is the second half of the mass layoff test unless 500 or more people are affected. On top of that, fourteen states impose a genuine obligation of their own — lower thresholds, longer notice, and in three states mandatory severance. Another five have a statute that gets listed as a mini-WARN and imposes no notice duty at all. The remaining thirty-two add nothing. We checked all 51 one at a time, at each state's own source.

The federal test, in the words of the regulation

Four definitions in 20 CFR 639.3 do most of the work, and each one is narrower than people assume.

A covered employer is a business enterprise that employs “100 or more employees, excluding part-time employees” or “100 or more employees, including part-time employees, who in the aggregate work at least 4,000 hours per week, exclusive of hours of overtime.” That second limb catches employers who count their headcount, see 80 full-timers, and stop reading.

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 one, where it causes an employment loss during any 30-day period for “50 or more employees, excluding any part-time employees.”

A mass layoff is a reduction in force that is not a plant closing and causes an employment loss at a single site during any 30-day period for “at least 33 percent of the active employees” and “at least 50 employees”, both excluding part-timers. Above 500 affected employees the percentage test drops away.

And employment loss is the definition that catches people out, because it is not just firing. It is “an employment termination, other than a discharge for cause, voluntary departure, or retirement”, or “a layoff exceeding 6 months”, or “a reduction in hours of work of individual employees of more than 50% during each month of any 6-month period.” An employer who halves everyone's hours to avoid a layoff can trigger WARN by doing so.

Source: 20 CFR 639.3 and 20 CFR 639.5(a)(1), read at source 9 September 2026 via the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations.

Does WARN reach your situation?

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The three exceptions, and what they do not do

20 CFR 639.9 opens by stating that “Section 3(b) of WARN sets forth three conditions under which the notification period may be reduced to less than 60 days.” They are the faltering company exception, which applies to plant closings where an employer was actively seeking capital, had a realistic prospect of obtaining it, and reasonably believed that giving notice would have prevented it; unforeseeable business circumstances, for closings and layoffs caused by sudden, dramatic and unexpected action outside the employer's control, such as a major client cancelling a contract; and natural disaster, for floods, earthquakes, storms and the like.

Read the verb in that sentence. The period may be reduced. None of the three removes the duty to give notice. The employer must still “give as much notice as is practicable” and must add “a brief statement of the reason for reducing the notice period” to the notice itself. An employer who relies on an exception and simply says nothing has not used the exception; it has failed to give notice, and the exception will not help it in court.

The exceptions are also narrower in practice than in prospect. “Business is bad and we saw it coming for months” is not an unforeseeable business circumstance. The test looks at whether the circumstance was sudden and outside the employer's control, not at whether the employer would have preferred not to give notice.

What a violation costs

Because there is no regulator, the numbers below are what an employee's lawyer works from.

Under 29 U.S.C. 2104 an employer that fails to give notice is liable to each affected employee for back pay for each day of violation, at not less than the higher of the average regular rate over the last three years of employment or the final regular rate, plus benefits under an employee benefit plan including the cost of medical expenses incurred during the employment loss. That liability is “calculated for the period of the violation, up to a maximum of 60 days, but in no event for more than one-half the number of days the employee was employed.” Short-tenure employees are therefore capped well below 60 days.

There is also a civil penalty of “not more than $500 for each day of such violation” payable to the unit of local government. It is avoidable, and the way to avoid it is specific: the penalty does not apply if the employer pays the affected workers “within 3 weeks from the date the employer orders the shutdown or layoff.” An employer that has already missed the notice period, and knows it, still has a three-week window worth understanding.

Employees bring the action “in any district court of the United States for any district in which the violation is alleged to have occurred, or in which the employer transacts business.”

What the exposure looks like in numbers

A rough illustration of what the statute provides. Nothing is sent or stored.

The fourteen states with a real obligation

Each of these imposes something federal WARN does not — a lower threshold, a longer notice period, or a payment. Where a state law applies, it is usually the binding one, because it is almost always stricter.

Three patterns are worth pulling out of that table. Iowa has the lowest employer threshold in the country at 25 employees, which means businesses a quarter of the federal size are covered — but it asks for only 30 days. Maine and New Jersey both mandate severance, at one week per year of service, which converts a notice statute into a cash liability whether or not notice was given; New Jersey adds four more weeks if the notice period was short. And Washington's chapter is brand new, enacted in 2025 and amended in 2026, which means a good deal of the WARN guidance still circulating does not mention it at all.

Two more are worth knowing for the opposite reason. Tennessee covers employers with 50 to 99 full-time employees — precisely the band federal WARN misses — so an employer too small for WARN can still owe notice there. And Vermont and Wisconsin aggregate across sites rather than counting a single site of employment, which can catch a layoff spread thinly across several locations that federal WARN would not reach.

The five that look like mini-WARN laws and are not

These states appear on most published mini-WARN lists. Read the statutes and they do not impose an advance-notice duty. If you are planning around one of them, plan around federal WARN instead.

Massachusetts — M.G.L. c. 151A §§ 71A–71G; c. 149 § 182 Advance notice is framed as voluntary. What is mandatory is the employer's duty to report a closing to the Commissioner, plus good-faith income and health-benefit maintenance for firms financed by a Commonwealth quasi-public agency.

Michigan — MCL 450.736 (Employee-Owned Corporation Act) The department “shall encourage” employers to give notice. There is no employer duty, no threshold, no deadline and no penalty.

Minnesota — Minn. Stat. § 116L.976 The Commissioner “shall encourage” notice. The mandatory part is reporting the names, addresses and occupations of terminated workers once notice is given.

Ohio — Ohio Rev. Code § 4113.31 The statute adopts the federal WARN definitions and creates no different standard and no state remedy.

Oregon — ORS 285A.516 Names the state agency that receives federal WARN notices. It sets no independent obligation.

The remaining thirty-two jurisdictions — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming — impose nothing beyond federal WARN. Several of them run a state portal for receiving federal WARN notices, which is easily mistaken for a state law and is not one.

What we cannot tell you

We cannot tell you whether a particular layoff triggers WARN, and neither can any page. The hard part is never the 60 days; it is what counts as a single site of employment, how losses aggregate over 90 days, who is part-time, and whether a sale of a business transfers the obligation. Those are the questions litigation is actually about.

We cannot keep this current for you. State law here moves — Washington's chapter did not exist in 2024 and has already been amended once. Check the statute before you rely on a threshold in the table.

We cannot see your contracts. Collective bargaining agreements, employment contracts and handbooks routinely create notice obligations that no statute imposes, and those bind you whatever the WARN answer is.

And we cannot advise you. A layoff anywhere near these thresholds is a matter for employment counsel, early, because the cheapest version of this problem is the one solved before notice goes out.

Frequently asked questions

Federal requirements quoted from the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and its regulations, read at source 9 September 2026: 20 CFR 639.3 for the definitions of employer, plant closing, mass layoff and employment loss; 20 CFR 639.5(a)(1) for the 60-day notice period; 20 CFR 639.9 for the faltering company, unforeseeable business circumstances and natural disaster exceptions and the duty to give as much notice as is practicable with a brief statement of the reason; and 29 U.S.C. 2104 for back pay, the maximum period, the $500-a-day civil penalty and the three-week payment provision that avoids it, and the district courts in which an action may be brought. The statement that the Department of Labor has no enforcement role is quoted from the Department’s own plant closings and layoffs page. State positions were established one state at a time against official sources only — the state legislature’s own site, the state code, or the state labor department — between 8 and 9 September 2026; law firm and HR-publisher summaries were not used. All 51 jurisdictions were checked. Fourteen were found to impose an obligation beyond federal WARN and are listed with their citations; five have a statute that looks like a mini-WARN but imposes no advance-notice duty and are described separately; the remaining thirty-two were found to impose nothing beyond federal WARN. Connecticut is placed in that last group on the substance — it has never had an advance-notice requirement — and this page does not describe the history of its repealed group-health-continuation provision, because the legislature’s site could not be read directly. State law in this area moves: Washington’s chapter was enacted in 2025 and amended in 2026. Verify against the statute before you act. Nothing here is legal advice, and a layoff with a WARN question in it is a matter for employment counsel.