Layoff Notice Requirements in Washington State

Washington employers planning a plant closing or mass layoff must give at least 60 days’ written notice to affected workers, the state Employment Security Department, and local government. The layoff notice requirements in Washington State come from two laws working in parallel: the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act and Washington’s Securing Timely Notification and Benefits for Laid-Off Employees Act, which took effect July 27, 2025. The state law reaches smaller employers than the federal one, so a company with 65 full-time workers can owe notice under Washington law even though federal WARN does not apply.

Which Employers Must Give Notice

Washington’s state law applies to any employer with 50 or more full-time employees. Federal WARN applies at 100 or more full-time employees, counting only those who work at least 20 hours per week and have been employed for at least six months of the prior year.¹

If you have between 50 and 99 full-time workers, only the state statute reaches you. At 100 or more, you comply with both at the same time. The state law largely mirrors federal WARN in structure, but adds two Washington-specific wrinkles: the notice must disclose whether the layoff results from relocating operations or contracting out positions, and workers currently on Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave cannot be included in the mass layoff.

What Counts as a Plant Closing or Mass Layoff

Two kinds of workforce reductions trigger the 60-day notice duty under federal law, and Washington uses the same framework:

Plant closing: a permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site, or a unit within a site, that eliminates 50 or more full-time jobs in a 30-day period.¹
Mass layoff: a workforce reduction that is not a closing and cuts at least 50 full-time employees who make up at least 33 percent of the active workforce at the site. The 33-percent floor disappears entirely at 500 or more affected full-time workers.¹

The 30-day period matters. Separate rounds of cuts can still be aggregated under a 90-day rule discussed below.

The 60-Day Notice: Who Gets It and What It Says

Written notice must be delivered at least 60 calendar days before the first separation. Weekends and holidays count.² The notice goes to three parties:

Each affected employee individually, or to the union if workers are represented.²
The Washington Employment Security Department.
The chief elected official of the community where the layoff occurs — a mayor, city council leader, or county executive. If the employer pays taxes to more than one local jurisdiction, notice goes to whichever received the highest payment the prior year.²

Federal regulations at 20 CFR 639.7 set out the required contents of the notice to the state and local government:³

Name and address of the site.
Whether the action is a closing or layoff, and whether permanent or temporary.
Date of the first expected separation and schedule of any further rounds.
Job titles being eliminated and the number of employees in each.
Whether senior employees have bumping rights.
Name and phone number of a company contact who can answer questions.

Washington’s state law layers on the two added disclosures: whether the layoff flows from relocating operations and whether it stems from contracting out the positions.⁴ The ESD filing also asks for names and addresses of affected employees, union information, and the signature of a company official.

One point that trips up employers: WARN does not permit pay in lieu of notice. Handing workers 60 days of severance instead of 60 days’ warning is a technical violation. Because the statutory remedy is back pay and benefits for the notice period, voluntary payment of the equivalent can satisfy the damages, but only if the payment is not already owed under a contract, policy, or another law.⁵

Filing With the Employment Security Department

Submit the notice to ESD by email or mail, on company letterhead, with all required contents.⁴

Email: ESDGPLayoffAssistance@esd.wa.gov with “WARN” in the subject line.
Mail: Employment Security Department, Grants Management Office, Attention: WARN Team, P.O. Box 9046, Olympia, WA 98507-9046.

Send a separate copy to the chief elected local official. Identifying the right person is the employer’s responsibility.⁴

When You Can Give Less Than 60 Days

Three exceptions allow shorter notice, and one removes the obligation entirely. An employer using any of them must still give as much notice as practically possible and include a written explanation for the shortened period.²

Faltering Company

Available only for plant closings, not mass layoffs. The employer must have been actively seeking capital or new business that could have kept the facility open, and must have reasonably believed that announcing the potential shutdown would have killed the deal. Courts read this exception narrowly. The employer has to point to specific actions, show a realistic chance of success, and demonstrate the money or business would have postponed the closing for a meaningful period. A large company with access to capital markets cannot isolate one struggling division and label the whole enterprise faltering.⁶

Unforeseeable Business Circumstances

Applies when the layoff was caused by something sudden, dramatic, and outside the employer’s control that could not have been reasonably anticipated 60 days earlier. The sudden loss of a major contract, a financial crisis at a principal client, or a government-ordered shutdown can qualify. A gradual decline visible months in advance does not.⁷

Natural Disaster

No WARN notice is required when a plant closing or mass layoff is directly caused by a flood, earthquake, severe drought, or similar event. The employer still has to prove the natural disaster was the actual cause of the job losses, not just a contributing factor.²

Temporary Projects, Strikes, and Lockouts

No notice is required when a temporary facility closes, when a specific project wraps up and the workers knew at hire that the job was project-based, or when the layoff results from a strike or lockout not designed to evade WARN. The employer has to show workers clearly understood their jobs were temporary when they were hired.⁸

The 90-Day Aggregation Rule

Employers cannot split a large layoff into smaller rounds to stay under the threshold. If separate job losses occur within any 90-day window, and each round alone falls below the trigger but together they meet or exceed it, 60 days’ notice is owed before each round. The only escape is proving each round arose from genuinely distinct causes.⁹

Example: 30 positions cut in January and 25 more in February at the same site, both below the 50-employee trigger. The combined 55 losses inside 90 days bring both rounds under WARN unless the employer can show the causes were separate.

What Happens When a Business Is Sold

Responsibility splits at the closing date. The seller owes notice for separations on or before the date the sale takes effect. The buyer owes notice for anything after. By statute, the seller’s employees are treated as the buyer’s employees the moment the sale closes, so workers the buyer keeps have not suffered an employment loss. For workers the buyer does not retain, one of the two sides must have given timely notice.¹

Penalties for Failing to Give Notice

An employer that orders a plant closing or mass layoff without proper notice is liable to each affected employee for back pay and the cost of benefits for every day of the violation, capped at 60 days. Back pay is calculated at the higher of the employee’s average rate over the prior three years or the final regular rate. Benefits liability covers medical costs the worker incurs during the violation period that would have been covered absent the layoff.¹⁰

Liability is reduced by wages the employer paid during the violation period and by voluntary, unconditional payments to employees that were not already required by another law, contract, or policy.¹⁰

Failing to notify local government adds a civil penalty of up to $500 per day for the length of the violation. That penalty can be avoided entirely if the employer pays all affected workers in full within three weeks of ordering the layoff.¹⁰ Washington’s state law carries similar penalties and additionally allows prevailing employees to recover attorney fees.

A court may reduce the penalty at its discretion if the employer proves the violation was committed in good faith with reasonable grounds for believing no notice was required. Enforcement runs through private lawsuits in federal district court. The Department of Labor does not independently enforce WARN.¹⁰

SharedWork as an Alternative

If the pressure is cost reduction rather than full elimination of positions, Washington’s SharedWork program lets an employer cut hours for a group of workers by 10 to 50 percent while those workers collect partial unemployment benefits for the lost wages. A plan can last up to a year, and employers can reapply when it expires.¹¹

The program is open to most businesses. SharedWork does affect an employer’s experience rating and future unemployment tax rate, but the impact is smaller than a full layoff where displaced workers draw full benefits. Check eligibility at 800-752-2500 (option 3); the application takes about 10 minutes.¹¹

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC Chapter 23 – Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2102 – Notice Required Before Plant Closings and Mass Layoffs
3
eCFR. 20 CFR 639.7 – What Must the Notice Contain
4
Employment Security Department. WARN Requirements
5
U.S. Department of Labor. WARN Advisor
6
eCFR. 20 CFR 639.9 – When May Notice Be Given Less Than 60 Days in Advance
7
U.S. Department of Labor. WARN Advisor – Unforeseeable Business Circumstances
8
eCFR. 20 CFR 639.5 – When Must Notice Be Given
9
U.S. Department of Labor. WARN Advisor – Aggregation
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2104 – Administration and Enforcement of Requirements
11
Employment Security Department. About SharedWork