NYC WARN Notice: Triggers, 90-Day Timeline, and Penalties

A WARN notice in NYC is the 90-day written warning that New York’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires private employers with 50 or more full-time employees to send before a plant closing, mass layoff, relocation of 50 miles or more, or sustained reduction in work hours.¹ The notice period is 30 days longer than the federal WARN Act demands, and the employee threshold is half the federal minimum, so many NYC businesses that assume they’re too small to worry about WARN are actually covered.

Which NYC Employers Are Covered

New York’s WARN Act applies to any private business that employs 50 or more full-time workers, or whose workforce logs at least 2,000 hours per week in the aggregate.² The headcount is enterprise-wide, not site-by-site. A company with 30 employees in Midtown and 25 in Brooklyn is covered, even though neither office alone would hit the threshold.

Part-time employees don’t count toward coverage. The statute defines part-time as anyone averaging fewer than 20 hours per week, or anyone employed for fewer than six of the 12 months before the notice date.² Federal, state, and local government agencies, school districts, and political subdivisions are also outside the law.

Here’s a point employers miss: the part-time exclusion only governs whether the business is covered. Once a qualifying event is triggered, part-time workers at the affected site are entitled to notice and can collect damages if they don’t get it.³ A workforce of 60 full-time and 40 part-time employees is 100 people who need individual written notice, even though only 60 counted toward coverage.

What Triggers the 90-Day Notice

Four kinds of workforce actions require WARN notice in NYC. Each has its own threshold, and the law uses rolling 30-day windows so employers can’t stage smaller cuts to stay under the limits.

Plant Closings

A plant closing is the permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site, or of one or more operating units within a site, that causes 25 or more full-time employees to lose their jobs during any 30-day period.² The rest of the company can keep operating. Shutting one 25-person NYC office qualifies even if the business has thriving locations elsewhere.

Mass Layoffs

A mass layoff is a reduction in force at a single site, during any 30-day period, that is not a plant closing and meets one of two tests. The first test requires that at least 25 full-time employees lose their jobs and that those 25 represent at least 33 percent of the site’s full-time workforce. The second test drops the percentage requirement if 250 or more full-time employees are let go.² Under the first test, both numbers have to be met. Cutting 25 workers from a 200-person site doesn’t qualify, because 25 is only 12.5 percent.

Relocations of 50 Miles or More

Moving all or substantially all of a company’s operations to a new site 50 or more miles away triggers notice if the move costs 25 or more full-time workers their jobs.⁴ “Substantially all” covers moving an entire division, product line, or operational segment. For NYC employers, a move from Manhattan to parts of New Jersey can easily cross 50 miles, while a move within the five boroughs almost certainly won’t.

Reductions in Hours

Hours cuts count when 25 or more full-time employees have their hours reduced by more than 50 percent in each month of any six consecutive months.² This is the trigger employers most often overlook. A gradual reduction that feels manageable month-to-month can quietly cross the line once it stretches past six months.

The 90-Day Timeline and Who Gets the Notice

Written notice has to reach every required recipient at least 90 calendar days before the first separation takes effect.¹ Calendar days, not business days. The clock runs backward from the first planned layoff date, so if the first employee is being let go on September 1, notice has to go out no later than June 3.

Acceptable delivery includes first-class mail, certified mail, or enclosing the notice in an employee’s paycheck.¹ Certified mail gives the strongest proof of delivery if compliance is later disputed, though the law doesn’t require it. If the layoff date later slips by more than 60 days from the original notice date, a completely new notice is required.

New York expects notice to reach a wider list of recipients than many employers realize:¹

Every affected employee, including part-time workers at the affected site, and any union that represents them
The New York State Department of Labor
The Local Workforce Investment Board for the area where the site is located
The chief elected official of the municipality and the school district covering the site
Each locality that provides police, fire, EMS, or other emergency services to the site⁵

The emergency services category catches employers off guard. Notifying the FDNY district or the local precinct isn’t something most HR teams think about when planning a layoff, but it’s in the statute, and the reasoning is that a major employer leaving a neighborhood changes emergency call volumes and strains local budgets.

What the Notice Must Say

New York requires every notice to include the same elements the federal WARN Act demands.¹ In practice, that means the site name and address, a company contact person with phone number, whether the action is a closing, layoff, relocation, or hours reduction, whether it is permanent or temporary, the expected first separation date and the schedule for later ones, the job titles being eliminated and the number of employees in each, the names and addresses of affected workers, whether any employees have bumping rights under a collective bargaining agreement, and the name and address of any union representing affected workers along with the name of its chief elected officer.

The New York State Department of Labor provides official filing forms on its website.⁵ Filling them out carefully matters. Incomplete filings slow down the state’s ability to line up unemployment insurance and reemployment services, and they leave a paper trail that looks bad if compliance is ever challenged.

When Notice Isn’t Required

The exceptions are narrow. An employer does not have to give 90 days’ notice if the mass layoff, relocation, or employment loss is caused by a physical calamity, an act of terrorism, or war.¹ A hurricane that destroys an office or a terrorist attack that forces a permanent closure would qualify.

New York also recognizes a “faltering company” exception for plant closings under Labor Law § 860-c, mirroring the federal concept. An employer actively seeking financing to keep the business alive may argue that giving notice would have scared off the capital it needed. The federal version of that test requires the employer to show it was actively pursuing a realistic financing opportunity, that the financing would have been enough to prevent the shutdown, and that the employer reasonably believed notice itself would have killed the deal.⁶ Courts read the exception narrowly, and the employer carries the full burden of proof.

Even with an exception, the employer still has to give as much notice as circumstances allow. “We couldn’t give 90 days” never means “we can give nothing.” Any employer invoking an exception should document why the full period was impossible and include that explanation when notice does go out.

Separately, some departures don’t count as “employment losses” at all. If a company relocates or consolidates and offers a worker a transfer to another site within reasonable commuting distance with no more than a six-month gap in employment, that worker’s departure isn’t an employment loss. The same is true of a transfer to any site, regardless of distance, if the employee accepts within 30 days of the offer or the closing, whichever is later.² Voluntary departures, retirements, and discharges for cause are also excluded. If 28 people leave a site but three retired voluntarily and one was fired for misconduct, the real employment-loss count is 24, which could put the event below the 25-person trigger.

What Happens If an Employer Skips Notice

An employer that fails to give the required notice faces two separate kinds of liability. The Commissioner of Labor can assess a civil penalty of up to $500 for each day the employer was in violation.⁷ On top of that, the employer owes back pay and benefits to every affected employee, including part-time workers, for the period of the violation.

Back pay is calculated at whichever rate is higher: the employee’s average regular rate over the three years before termination, or the final rate of compensation. Benefits include health insurance premiums, employer retirement contributions, disability coverage, life insurance, and accrued vacation the employee would have earned during the violation period. The maximum is 60 days’ worth of pay and benefits, or half the total number of days the employee worked for the company, whichever is smaller.³

That half-tenure cap matters for newer employees. A worker who had been on the payroll for 40 days is capped at 20 days of back pay, not 60. For a long-tenured workforce, the full 60-day maximum applies to every affected person, and multiplied across dozens or hundreds of workers, the exposure climbs fast.

Enforcement runs through the Commissioner of Labor, who can investigate, hold administrative hearings, and issue orders with the force of a court judgment. If the employer doesn’t challenge the order within 30 days, the Commissioner can file it with the county clerk and collect it like any other judgment.⁸

How New York WARN Differs From Federal WARN

NYC employers above the federal threshold have to comply with both laws, and the differences are the places compliance tends to break down:

Federal law covers employers with 100 or more workers; New York covers 50 or more.⁷
Federal law requires 60 days of notice; New York requires 90.
The federal relocation threshold is 100 miles; New York’s is 50.
Federal law requires notice to employees, the state dislocated-worker unit, and the local government; New York adds school districts and emergency service providers.¹

An employer with 75 employees is covered by New York’s law but not the federal one. An employer with 150 employees is covered by both and has to satisfy whichever rule is stricter on each point. The practical result: 90 days of notice (not 60), notice to emergency services (not just the municipality), and relocation triggers at 50 miles (not 100).

How to Check Whether a WARN Notice Was Filed

The New York State Department of Labor runs a public WARN Dashboard where anyone can search notices filed across the state. The dashboard filters by county, business name, date, industry, and Workforce Development Board area.⁹ For NYC filings, filter by the five boroughs’ counties (New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx, and Richmond) or by the New York City Workforce Development Board.

The NYC Office of Talent and Workforce Development also keeps a page acknowledging WARN filings that affect the city, though it directs users to the state DOL for the complete database and filing requirements.¹⁰ If you’re an employee who suspects your employer failed to file a required notice, the dashboard is the fastest way to confirm it.

1
New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-B – Notice
2
New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-A – Definitions
3
New York State Department of Labor. 12 NYCRR Part 921 – NY WARN Act Regulations
4
New York State Department of Labor. WARN For Jobseekers – Frequently Asked Questions
5
New York State Department of Labor. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification
6
eCFR. 20 CFR 639.9 – When May Notice Be Given Less Than 60 Days in Advance
7
New York State Department of Labor. WARN Act Fact Sheet
8
New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-F – Powers of the Commissioner
9
New York State Department of Labor. WARN Dashboard
10
NYC Office of Talent and Workforce Development. WARN Notices