WARN Act and Temporary Workers: Do Staffing-Agency Workers Count?

When a plant closes or a large layoff is announced, the headlines usually count permanent, full-time employees. Temporary and staffing-agency workers at the same site often wonder whether they count at all — and whether anyone owes them a WARN notice. It depends on who their employer is, how many hours they work, and how long they have been employed.

Who the employer is matters most

The federal WARN Act requires covered employers to give 60 days' written notice of a plant closing or mass layoff. But the notice obligation falls on the employer, and for a staffing-agency worker, the employer is usually the agency, not the company where the worker spends each day.

That means a client company can end an assignment without itself issuing a WARN notice to the agency's workers, while the agency may still have its own obligation if it is laying off enough of its own employees. If the agency simply reassigns a worker to another client, there may be no employment loss at all, even though the assignment ended. Who signs the paychecks, who hired the worker, and who controls the schedule usually identifies the employer.

The 100-employee threshold and part-time work

The WARN Act generally applies to employers with 100 or more full-time employees. For counting purposes, the law treats some workers differently. Employees who work fewer than 20 hours per week on average, or who have worked fewer than six months in the last 12 months, are generally not counted as full-time employees for the threshold, and are also generally excluded from the count of affected employees in a mass layoff or plant closing.

That rule catches many temporary workers. A worker on a short assignment, or working only a few shifts a week, may fall outside the count even when permanent colleagues at the same site are covered. It does not mean the worker has no rights — it means the WARN Act's notice requirement may not apply to their job loss. Some state mini-WARN laws are broader, so the state rule is always worth checking.

Temporary, seasonal, and short-term hires

Not every short-term job is the same under the law. A seasonal worker hired for a known, limited season, a worker hired for a specific project with an understood end date, and an agency worker on an open-ended assignment are in different positions.

The key questions are whether the worker understood the job was temporary when hired, and whether the employment relationship itself ends. If a worker was hired with the understanding that the job would end on a certain date or when a project finished, the end of that job is generally not treated as an employment loss under the WARN Act. But if a supposedly temporary assignment keeps getting extended, or a worker told the job was permanent is then laid off with everyone else, the facts may point the other way. Keep offer letters, assignment confirmations, and messages about end dates — those documents settle this question more reliably than memory.

When a client-site layoff still reaches agency workers

A mass layoff at a client site can still affect agency workers even when no WARN notice is owed to them: the assignment may end with little warning or hours may be cut. The first call should usually be to the agency: ask whether the assignment ended, whether another placement is available, and whether the agency itself has issued any notice. Ask in writing for the reason the assignment ended and the last day of work — that record matters for unemployment claims, where eligibility turns on why work ended and whether suitable replacement work was offered and refused.

What to check if you are a temporary or agency worker

First, identify your employer from your pay stub or hiring paperwork. Second, check whether you received any written notice, and from whom — a notice from the client company about its own employees is not the same as a notice from your agency. Third, confirm your hours and start date, since both affect whether you fall inside the federal counting rules. Fourth, look up your state's mini-WARN law, which may cover you even when the federal law does not. Finally, contact your state's Rapid Response team and unemployment office early: both can help whether or not a WARN notice was required.

Why the registry numbers undercount temporary workers

This gap is one reason WARN data undercounts total job losses. Layoff Atlas currently tracks 686 notices covering 66,703 reported workers in its 90-day window, with 29 counts unavailable, and California (17,715 workers) and Washington (17,361) leading the state ranking. Those figures count only the workers named in filed notices. Agency and short-term workers who fall outside the counting rules often never appear in them. These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses, and coverage and reporting rules vary by state — so a low number for a state or site is not proof that few people lost work there.

Temporary workers are easy to overlook in layoff statistics precisely because their employment is split between agency and client. Knowing who your employer is, and which counting rules apply to you, is the difference between waiting for a notice that was never owed and acting on the help that is actually available.

Data source: Layoff Atlas