Home

Layoff Notice Laws for Small Employers: Federal WARN, New York and New Jersey

Official sources checked: November 9, 2026. AI-assisted draft, pending editor review.

The contract that paid for more than a third of Elena's crew ends in January. She owns a commercial cleaning company in Yonkers, New York, with 62 full-time employees and six part-timers, and she has always assumed layoff notice laws were written for companies with thousands of people. Most 2026 layoff headlines do concern companies far larger than hers. But the notice laws start at smaller sizes than many owners expect, especially in New York and New Jersey, and New York's line is 50.

Elena and her company are made up. The rules below come from the official pages and the statutes, read on November 9, 2026. The federal law is the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, and New York and New Jersey each have their own version. This article describes the laws. It is not advice for a specific layoff, which needs a lawyer.

The table answers five questions for each law: who is covered, how much notice, what triggers it, what severance or penalty follows, and who has to be told.

A 60-person New York employer can be covered by state law even when federal WARN doesn't apply. The federal law starts at 100 employees, New York's at 50, and each one counts part-time people differently.

The thresholds are about headcount, and each law counts differently. A business whose only employees are 60 full-time people in New York is covered by New York's law but, on those numbers, not by the federal law, which has a 100-employee test and a 4,000-hours-a-week alternative. A New Jersey employer with 100 employees counts its part-time employees toward the threshold, while the federal law generally excludes people who average under 20 hours a week or have worked under six months.

Where the people work matters too. New Jersey's statute defines an establishment as a place of employment operated for more than three years, not a temporary construction site, and says it may be a single location or a group of locations. The 100-employee line is not worded as limited to people employed in New Jersey, and the definition of employer includes a person who owns and operates the nominal employer, who owns a subsidiary that owns and operates it, or who makes the decision behind the mass layoff. Ask counsel how this applies if you have more than one site.

A small employer should count by each law's own definition, at each site, and recount before any layoff plan is final.

Back to Elena. Losing the contract means letting 26 of her 62 full-time employees go within one month. Here is how her numbers meet the tests in the table. This is arithmetic on a made-up company, not a conclusion about any real layoff.

Ninety days before the end of January is roughly the start of November. If Elena hears about the contract in mid-November, the clock she didn't know about has already started. The notice also goes to more than her employees. New York's list includes employee representatives, the state Department of Labor, the local workforce development board, the chief elected official, the school districts and the localities that provide police, fire and emergency medical services where the site is located. Her six part-timers are left out of the counts, though they still get notice.

Now a separate comparison case, with two facts changed. Move the company to Newark, New Jersey, where its one site has operated for ten years, and make it larger: 110 employees, all full-time. The same lost contract ends 55 jobs within 30 days.

New Jersey then adds something the other two don't: severance. Take one of the 55, an employee with six full years of employment. A week of pay is $900 at the final regular rate and $860 at the average regular rate over the last three years.

Each of the 55 people has their own tenure and rate, so the calculation has to be run person by person. Estimate notice dates and severance before settling on a layoff date. In this 110-employee example, New Jersey's law adds severance to the cost of the layoff, and late notice can add four more weeks of pay for each person.

New Jersey's business portal says that as of April 10, 2023 several changes to the state's WARN law took effect. Employees affected by layoffs, closures or relocations must now get 90 days' advance notice. Employees must be notified whenever a mass layoff affects at least 50 workers at a worksite. Part-time employees have the same protections as full-time employees and are counted. Employers must give discharged employees one week of severance pay for each year of service.

Two or more smaller groups of terminations at one establishment within 90 days are added together unless the employer shows their causes are separate and distinct. Older New Jersey forms and summaries that mention 60 days or a one-third test pre-date the amendment, so check that any form or checklist you use is current.

The statute text adds details a small employer needs. Severance is one week of pay for each full year of employment, calculated at the higher of the average regular rate over the employee's last three years or the final regular rate, and an employee who gets less than the required notice is owed four additional weeks. Severance is earned in full when employment ends, any greater severance the employer owes under a contract or policy applies instead, and a waiver is not effective without approval from the commissioner or a court. Federal WARN back pay is credited against the New Jersey severance.

The written notice must give the number of employees and the dates, the reasons, any other employment available at the employer's other establishments with its location, pay and benefits, employee rights, the amount of severance, and a statement of the employees' right to information, referral and counseling from the state's response team, on the state's form. The employer must also give the response team the on-site access to employees it determines is necessary.

The state portal describes obligations for employers with at least 100 employees, and the statute's notice duty is expressly for those employers. The statute's severance paragraph does not repeat that wording, but the state's own notice form (NJES-997, April 2023) says the employer who employs 100 or more employees shall provide the severance pay. An employer with fewer than 100 employees should ask counsel before relying on either reading.

An employee can sue for costs and attorneys' fees and compensatory damages, with lost-wage damages limited to the severance amount. The New Jersey Department of Labor's own page says it has neither enforcement nor rulemaking authority under the Act; its role is limited to sending a rapid response team to give workers information, referral and counseling and to making the notice form available. Employees enforce the Act by suing.

The federal Department of Labor describes WARN as protecting workers, families and communities by requiring covered employers to give at least 60 calendar days of advance written notice of a plant closing or mass layoff affecting 50 or more employees at a single site. Managers and supervisors are entitled to notice as well as hourly and salaried workers.

The Department lists exceptions for unforeseeable business circumstances, faltering companies and natural disasters. These generally allow reduced notice, not none: the employer must still give as much notice as practicable and a statement of the reason for the reduction. The faltering-company exception applies only to plant closings. The statute also has separate exclusions, for example for temporary facilities and for strikes and lockouts, so read 29 USC 2103.

The Department's Employment and Training Administration administers WARN but does not seek damages for workers who got no or inadequate notice. Some states have their own laws, which is why New York and New Jersey matter here.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a private outplacement firm, tracks layoff announcements, which is not the same as WARN filings or government data. Its October 2026 report counted 43,994 announced cuts in October, the lowest October since 2023, and 617,189 from January through October, down 44% from the same months of 2025. About 20% of 2026's announced cuts cited AI, and market or economic conditions overtook AI as the leading reason.

Two points for a small employer. First, the figures describe announcements by employers of all sizes and say nothing about whether a particular layoff is covered. Second, the way people are chosen is a legal risk of its own: federal anti-discrimination law covers layoff decisions, and some places add rules for software that ranks people. See AI in Hiring.

You can also see real notices. New York publishes WARN notices in a public dashboard on its Department of Labor site, and New Jersey publishes yearly archives of notices posted.

These are questions to take to an employment lawyer, not instructions for a particular layoff.

Want the next guide when it's published? Join the list.