New Jersey WARN Act: Notice, Severance, and Exceptions

New Jersey’s WARN Act requires employers with 100 or more employees to give 90 days’ written notice and pay mandatory severance before carrying out a mass layoff, plant closing, or transfer of operations affecting 50 or more workers. Formally the Millville Dallas Airmotive Plant Job Loss Notification Act, the statute was substantially strengthened by 2023 amendments that broadened who counts as a covered employee, expanded the definition of a workplace, and made severance automatic rather than negotiable.¹ The result is one of the most employee-protective layoff laws in the country, and it goes well beyond what federal law requires.

Which Employers and Layoffs Are Covered

The law applies to any employer with 100 or more employees. Since 2023, that count includes every worker on the payroll, full-time or part-time, in New Jersey or outside it.² A company with 60 employees in New Jersey and 45 in Pennsylvania is covered. The term “employer” also reaches parent companies and anyone who directly or indirectly controls the layoff decision, so routing a layoff through a subsidiary doesn’t avoid coverage.³

Three types of workforce actions trigger the law once they affect 50 or more employees at an establishment within a 30-day period:

A mass layoff — a reduction in force that eliminates 50 or more positions without a closure or move.
A termination of operations — a permanent or temporary shutdown of an establishment or of facilities or operating units within one.
A transfer of operations — moving a business activity to a different location, inside or outside New Jersey.

“Establishment” now covers all of an employer’s locations within New Jersey, not a single physical site.⁴ An employer can no longer avoid the law by spreading 50 layoffs across several New Jersey offices.

The 90-Day Aggregation Rule

Employers can’t dodge coverage by splitting layoffs into smaller batches. If two or more groups of terminations happen at a single establishment within any 90-day period and together exceed 50, the law treats the whole set as one triggering event. The only way out is proof that each group had a completely separate and distinct cause.³ A company that lays off 30 people in January and 25 more in March for the same business downturn is treated as having conducted one mass layoff of 55.

The 90-Day Notice

Covered employers must deliver written notice at least 90 days before the first termination takes effect. If federal law ever requires a longer period, the employer must provide whichever is longer.³ In practice the state’s 90 days controls.

The notice has to reach four parties:

The Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development.
The chief elected official of the municipality where the establishment is located.
Each employee whose job will end.
Any collective bargaining representative for affected employees.

The Department of Labor accepts the Commissioner’s copy through an online submission portal.⁵ The 90-day clock starts when proper notice is received.

The notice itself must spell out, at minimum:

The number of employees affected and the specific date of each termination.
The reasons for the layoff, closure, or transfer.
Any job openings at the employer’s other locations, including pay and benefits there.
A description of employee rights to wages, severance, benefits, and pensions, including any rights under a collective bargaining agreement.
The dollar amount of mandatory severance owed under the statute.
Information about the state’s rapid response team and public programs for job search help, retraining, and counseling.

Once the Commissioner issues an official form, employers must use it.⁶ A notice that leaves out required content is treated as a defective notice, which carries the same penalty as no notice at all.

Mandatory Severance Pay

This is where the statute has teeth. Every terminated employee is entitled to one week of pay for each full year of service.³ A 12-year employee gets 12 weeks. The pay rate used is the higher of two numbers: the employee’s average regular rate over the last three years, or their final regular rate.² This protects workers who recently took a pay cut from having severance calculated at the reduced rate.

The severance is classified as compensation for back pay and losses tied to the end of the employment relationship. It is earned in full the moment the job ends and must be paid on the employee’s final day of work, not weeks later on a payroll cycle.³

No Release-for-Severance Deals

One of the most important 2023 changes: an employer cannot condition WARN severance on an employee signing a release of legal claims. Employees cannot waive the right to this severance without approval from the state or a court. The money flows from the statute, not from a negotiated agreement, so you receive it regardless of whether you sign anything your employer puts in front of you. An employer may still offer additional severance in exchange for a release, but the statutory amount is yours either way.

The Four-Week Penalty for Short Notice

If an employer provides less than 90 days’ notice, each affected employee receives an additional four weeks of pay on top of the service-based severance.³ That 12-year worker would receive 16 weeks instead of 12. There is no partial-credit safe harbor; even one day short of 90 triggers the full four-week add-on for every affected employee.

The Narrow Exceptions

The statute carves out only a few situations where notice and severance don’t apply. A layoff, closure, or transfer is excused if it is made necessary by:

Fire, flood, natural disaster, or national emergency.
Acts of war or civil disorder.
Industrial sabotage.
Loss of Medicare or Medicaid certification.
Revocation of a facility’s operating license under the Health Care Facilities Planning Act.

Economic downturns, loss of a major client, and corporate mergers do not qualify. The burden sits on the employer to prove the listed cause made the action necessary.⁴ Importantly, the federal WARN Act’s “unforeseeable business circumstances” and “faltering company” exceptions, which allow shortened notice in some cases, are not part of New Jersey’s law.⁷

How It Differs From Federal WARN

Both laws apply at the same time, and compliance with one does not substitute for compliance with the other. The state law is more protective on every major point:

Notice period: federal law requires 60 days; New Jersey requires 90.⁸
Employee threshold: federal law counts only full-time employees with at least six months of service and 20+ weekly hours. New Jersey counts every employee.
Mass layoff trigger: federal law requires 500 employees, or 50 employees who make up at least one-third of the workforce. New Jersey’s trigger is simply 50.
Severance: federal WARN requires none. New Jersey mandates one week per year of service, plus the four-week short-notice penalty.
Establishment: federal law looks at a single site of employment. New Jersey aggregates all of an employer’s locations in the state.

Providing 90 days’ notice under New Jersey law satisfies the federal 60-day rule automatically. The reverse is not true: 60 days violates New Jersey law and triggers the four-week severance penalty for every affected employee.³

If You Receive a WARN Notice

Read the notice carefully for the termination date, the severance dollar amount, and any job openings the employer must list at its other locations. If an employer fails to pay the required severance, affected employees can bring a private court action for compensatory damages and reasonable attorneys’ fees. Because the severance is classified as earned compensation, employees may also be able to pursue it through the state’s wage payment enforcement mechanisms, the same way they would recover unpaid wages.

The notice itself must point you to the state’s rapid response team and available public programs for job search assistance, retraining, and counseling.⁶ These services are coordinated through local American Job Centers.⁹ The 90-day window is most useful when you start using them early rather than waiting until your final day.

1
Justia. New Jersey Code 34-21-7 – Short Title
2
New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. New Jersey Code 34-21 – Plant Closings, Transfers, Mass Layoffs
3
Justia. New Jersey Code 34-21-2 – Requirements for Establishments Subject to Transfer, Termination of Operations, Mass Layoffs
4
Justia. New Jersey Code 34-21-1 – Definitions Relative to Prenotification of Certain Plant Closings, Transfers and Mass Layoffs
5
State of New Jersey. File a WARN Notice
6
Justia. New Jersey Code 34-21-3 – Contents of Required Notification
7
eCFR. 20 CFR 639.9 – When May Notice Be Given Less Than 60 Days in Advance
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 US Code 2102 – Notice Required Before Plant Closings and Mass Layoffs
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Rapid Response Services