WARN Act and Probationary Workers — Do New Hires Get 60 Days' Notice?

If you were hired a few weeks ago and are still in your probationary period, a layoff announcement can feel doubly uncertain. You may wonder whether the 60 days' notice promised by the federal WARN Act applies to you at all. The short answer is that probation, on its own, does not remove WARN Act protection. But new hires do count differently when deciding whether the law is triggered in the first place.

Probation is not a WARN Act term

The WARN Act — the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — requires covered employers to give 60 days' written notice before a plant closing or mass layoff. Nothing in the federal law creates an exception for probationary employees. Probation is an employer policy, not a legal category under WARN. Being at-will, or still inside a 30-, 60-, or 90-day probationary window, does not by itself take you out of a WARN notice.

What matters instead is whether the employer and the layoff meet the law's thresholds, and whether you count as an affected employee.

How new hires count toward the thresholds

This is where newness can matter. Under the WARN Act's regulations, an employee who has worked fewer than 6 of the last 12 months — or who averages fewer than 20 hours a week — is treated as a "part-time" employee for threshold purposes. That label is about counting, not about whether you deserve notice.

Part-time employees do not count toward the employer-size test (generally 100 or more full-time employees) or toward the job-loss numbers that trigger the law. So a workforce made up largely of very recent hires might not trigger WARN at all, even if many people lose their jobs.

But once a WARN event is triggered by the rest of the workforce, affected part-time employees — including recent hires in that category — are still entitled to receive notice. In other words, being new can affect whether the law switches on, but it does not switch you off once it is on.

The 60-day clock works the same for everyone

If WARN applies, the notice period is the same regardless of tenure. A worker hired last month and a worker with ten years at the company are both entitled to 60 days' notice of the employment loss, or to pay in lieu of notice if the employer chooses that route instead. The law does not scale notice down for short service.

That said, the WARN Act is a notice law, not a severance law. It does not guarantee severance pay, extended benefits, or a payout beyond the notice period itself. Severance, unused vacation payout, and continued health coverage depend on company policy, employment agreements, and other laws — such as COBRA for health coverage continuation. Employers sometimes tier severance by tenure, so check the written policy rather than assuming.

What to check if you are on probation and a layoff is announced

First, find out whether a WARN notice was actually filed. Employers must give written notice to affected employees, to the state dislocated-worker unit, and to the local chief elected official. State labor agencies publish many of these notices, and you can search for your employer's legal name. If no notice was filed, that does not automatically mean the law was broken — the layoff may fall below the thresholds, especially if many affected workers are recent hires who do not count toward them.

Second, do not confuse probation with a loss of other rights. Unemployment benefits, for example, are governed by state law, not by whether you completed probation. Eligibility usually turns on earnings and work history over a base period, and a layoff — as opposed to a firing for misconduct — is generally the kind of job separation that qualifies, subject to each state's rules.

Where state mini-WARN laws can change the picture

Several states have their own layoff-notice laws — often called mini-WARN laws — with lower thresholds or longer notice periods than the federal law. New York, for example, requires 90 days' notice, and New Jersey requires 90 days plus mandatory severance in covered cases. In a state with a lower employer-size threshold, a layoff that escapes federal WARN might still trigger state notice.

The bottom line

Probation does not erase WARN rights, but short tenure can affect the arithmetic that decides whether WARN applies. If your employer is large enough and the layoff is big enough, you are entitled to the same 60 days' notice as longer-serving colleagues. If the layoff falls below the thresholds — partly because recent hires do not count toward them — the federal notice duty may not arise, though a state mini-WARN law or a company policy might still apply. Either way, get the notice in writing, keep a copy, and check your state's rules rather than assuming probation leaves you with nothing.

These figures describe reported plans, not confirmed job losses. WARN notices are advance notifications of planned layoffs and closures; some announced cuts are later reduced, delayed, or cancelled, and coverage varies by state.

Data source: Layoff Atlas