New York's WARN Act: 90 Days' Notice and the 50-Employee Rule

New York gives workers the longest advance warning of a layoff anywhere in the United States: 90 days. Under the federal WARN Act, the minimum is 60. New York's own law (N.Y. Labor Law § 860) adds 30 days on top of the federal floor — and reaches employers the federal law never touches. Sixty days' notice satisfies federal law and still breaks New York law by a full month. Here is how it works, who it covers, and what New York's layoff numbers look like under it.

The 90-day rule

The core of the law is simple: a covered employer must give at least 90 days' written notice before a plant closing, mass layoff, or relocation takes effect. The clock starts when the notice is delivered, not when the decision is made. The federal WARN Act's 60-day rule still applies in New York, but it is the lower bar: an employer that gives 60 days owes affected workers 30 more days of pay and benefits under state law. In force since November 2008, it was amended most recently in June 2023.

Who has to give notice

Federal WARN covers employers with 100 or more full-time employees. New York cuts that threshold in half: any private business with 50 or more full-time employees in the state is covered, or 50 or more employees who together work at least 2,000 hours a week. That pulls in thousands of mid-sized employers that federal WARN ignores. Government employers are excluded at every level. Part-time workers — under 20 hours a week on average, or fewer than six of the previous twelve months — do not count toward the threshold.

What triggers a notice

Four events trigger New York WARN:

• Plant closing: a permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site, or a unit within it, affecting 25 or more full-time employees within 30 days. Federal law sets this bar at 50.
• Mass layoff: a reduction in force, not tied to a closing, affecting 25 or more full-time employees at one site within 30 days when they are at least a third of the site's workforce — or 250 or more regardless of percentage. Federal law requires 50 plus a third, or 500 outright.
• Relocation: moving operations 50 miles or more away.
• Hours reduction: cutting hours by more than half for each month of six consecutive months, affecting 25 or more full-time employees (with the 33 percent test) or 250 or more.

Employment losses are aggregated over a rolling 90-day period, so an employer cannot dodge the law by splitting one layoff into rounds.

Who gets the notice, and what the state sees

Written notice must go to affected employees, their union representative if there is one, the New York State Department of Labor, the local workforce development board, and the chief elected official of the local government. Employers must also file with the Department of Labor under its implementing regulations (12 NYCRR Part 921) when they notify workers. That filing is why New York's WARN notices show up in public data: the Department of Labor publishes them, and the Layoff Atlas registry collects them. A notice that reaches workers but never the state is a violation in itself — and leaves no public trace.

What happens when notice is short

When a covered employer gives less than 90 days, each affected employee can claim back pay and benefits for every day the notice fell short, up to the full 90 days. A 60-day notice in New York is a 30-day violation: 30 days of pay and benefits per affected worker. Workers have up to six years to bring a claim — far longer than the federal window. That is what makes the 90-day rule bite: the missing month is not a technicality, it is a month of wages.

New York in the WARN data

New York's numbers reflect a state where the law catches far more layoffs than the federal floor alone would. In 2026 so far, the registry lists 220 New York notices covering 13,326 reported workers. Over the last 365 days, 219 official filings reported 13,241 workers. The newest official notice is dated October 2, 2026, and 16 notices have future effective dates. The archive runs deep: 6,590 notices covering 549,615 workers, including the 2020 pandemic spike, when 2,212 notices reported 240,148 workers. One caution: only 220 of the 6,590 archive records come directly from government sources; the rest are attributed secondary records, and 827 carry no worker count at all. These figures describe reported plans, not confirmed job losses.

Reading the 90 days

For a New York worker who gets a WARN notice, the 90 days are the most valuable part of the law: a full quarter to file for unemployment, job-hunt while still employed, and check health coverage — and, if the notice came late, to know the missing days are owed as pay. The rule also explains why the state's data looks different: more employers are covered, smaller layoffs are counted, and notices arrive a month earlier than the federal floor would produce. Nationally, the current 90-day window holds 706 notices covering 65,134 reported workers, with the week of November 14 the heaviest upcoming week at 8,510.

Data source: Layoff Atlas