Interactive tool

WARN Act Eligibility Checker

Enter the headcount details of a planned layoff to see whether the federal WARN Act's 60-day advance-notice requirement is triggered, and where a stricter state law may apply.

A planned layoff triggers WARN Act notice at 100+ employees and 50+ workers affected

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the federal WARN Act requires employers with 100 or more staff to give 60 days' written notice before a qualifying mass layoff (generally 500+ workers, or 50+ when that is at least a third of the site) or plant closing. PlainLayoffs has recorded 8,798 such notices covering 1,411,142 workers; this checker applies the same statutory thresholds those filings are measured against.

See our methodology for how these WARN Act filings are sourced and processed.

The layoff

Full-time employees company-wide (the federal floor is 100).

Used to test the “50+ workers and 33% of the site” rule.

How the federal WARN Act test works

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act applies to employers with 100 or more full-time employees. When it applies, the employer must give 60 calendar days’ written notice before either a plant closing (a site shutdown cutting 50+ jobs) or a mass layoff. A mass layoff is defined two ways: 500 or more workers at a single site, or 50–499 workers when that group is at least 33% of the active workforce at the site.

Several states set a lower bar through their own “mini-WARN” laws. California, for example, applies at 75 employees and 50 affected workers; New York requires notice for 25+ affected workers and gives 90 days. This checker reports the federal result and flags when a stricter state rule is likely to matter, it is an educational estimate, not legal advice.

Every figure on PlainLayoffs is rendered directly from public WARN Act filings and state workforce agency records, no number is typed in by an editor. This checker's thresholds are drawn directly from federal and state WARN Act statutes. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of June 2026. A WARN filing is a legally required notice, not a judgment of a company's management or financial health; rankings here reflect filed notice volume only.