The federal WARN Act requires 60 days' notice. Several states require more, or apply the requirement at a lower employee threshold. A notice that falls short is not automatically a violation — the statute contains exceptions — but it is the fact pattern worth looking at first.
The problem is that no state publishes "days of notice given." They publish dates, in inconsistent fields, sometimes with a notice date and an effective date, sometimes with only one of the two. Working out the gap is arithmetic across a file with tens of thousands of rows, and it has to be redone every time the file refreshes.
Why short notice happens
Three broad reasons, and they are not equally interesting.
The exceptions. The statute recognises circumstances — a faltering company actively seeking capital, business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable, a natural disaster. A short notice with one of these asserted is a different case from a short notice with no explanation.
Rolling closures. A company announces a site closure with adequate notice, then extends or accelerates. The paperwork trail can leave a short-notice appearance that a full file explains.
No reason given. The notice is simply late. This is the category worth your time.
The filing itself rarely distinguishes them. That distinction is case assessment, and it is yours to make — but you have to find the short-notice filings before you can assess anything, and that is a sorting problem, not a legal one.
What actually gets you there faster
Two things, neither of which the state file provides.
The arithmetic, done. Notice date to effective date, per filing, with the correct requirement for that state applied. Sorted so the shortest gaps are at the top.
The dates that have not passed. A file downloaded today mixes filings from years ago with ones that have not happened yet. We hold filings dated from 2004 through October 2026. For most purposes only the future-dated ones matter, and they are a small fraction of the file.
What we provide, and what we do not
We normalise the public filings from the states we cover, resolve each to a county, compute the notice gap, and score the county for displacement context. The short-notice view is published at kcalbin.com/warn/short-notice.
We do not tell you whether a filing is a violation. We cannot — that depends on the exceptions, the underlying facts, and the full employer file, none of which are in a public notice log. What we do is put the filings most likely to reward a closer look at the top of the list.
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