If you work through a staffing agency, a layoff can leave you with a confusing question: who was supposed to warn you? The company where you actually showed up every day, or the agency that signed your paycheck? The answer matters, because the WARN Act's 60-day notice rule only binds an "employer" — and in agency work, that label is not always obvious.
The short-term exclusion comes first
The federal WARN Act does not protect every worker. It excludes employees who were hired with the understanding that their job was temporary. That is the first filter for agency workers: if you took a placement knowing it was a short-term assignment — a few weeks covering a busy season, for example — the law generally treats you as outside WARN protection, even if dozens of temps end at once.
That exclusion is about the understanding at hiring, not about the job title. A worker placed for a defined short stint is in a different position from a worker who has been on the same assignment for a year with no end date in sight. If your assignment kept getting extended, or nobody ever told you it was temporary, that distinction is worth raising — it is exactly the kind of fact that decides these cases.
Agency or client: follow the employment relationship
For workers who are covered, the next question is who counts as the employer. As a rule, the staffing agency is the employer of the workers on its payroll: it hires, pays, and can reassign them. The client company is the place of work, not necessarily the employer.
That distinction produces two very different outcomes when an assignment ends:
- If the client ends your assignment but the agency keeps you employed — reassigning you to another site, for instance — there may be no "employment loss" at all, and no WARN notice is triggered.
- If the agency itself lays off a large group of its own workers, or closes a branch, the agency can be the employer that owes notice, just like any other employer.
In practice, both sides often point at each other. The client says the workers belonged to the agency; the agency says the decision was the client's. Workers caught in the middle should not accept either answer at face value. Ask both, in writing, who your employer of record was and whether a WARN notice was filed — and check the state WARN list under both names.
Size thresholds still apply
Even when the agency is the employer, the WARN Act's thresholds still have to be met. Federal law generally covers employers with 100 or more full-time employees, and is triggered by a plant closing affecting 50 or more workers, or a mass layoff of at least 50 workers (if they are at least a third of the workforce) or 500 or more workers regardless of percentage.
That means a single client site shedding 20 agency workers will rarely trigger federal WARN on its own, even if the total across several sites is larger. Workers are counted by site of employment and by employer, so how the agency's workforce is grouped matters. Some state mini-WARN laws are broader — California, New York, and New Jersey, among others, use lower thresholds or wider coverage — so a layoff that misses the federal trigger can still require notice under state law.
What the numbers show right now
These edge cases are not rare. Staffing and temporary work sits behind many of the filings tracked on Layoff Atlas, where figures describe reported plans, not confirmed job losses. As of October 26, 2026, the registry's 90-day window holds 681 notices covering 65,682 reported workers, with 33 counts unavailable. The largest state totals are Washington (17,073 workers), California (14,001), Illinois (4,626), Texas (3,652), and Ohio (3,180).
The coming weeks stay heavy: 5,503 workers are scheduled for the week of October 26, followed by 5,061 for November 2, 6,568 for November 9, 6,145 for November 16, 6,120 for November 23, and 5,592 for November 30. Any worker whose assignment ends in that stretch should check whether a notice was filed — under either the agency's name or the client's.
What to check if your assignment ends
First, find out who your employer of record was: the name on your pay stub and tax forms is the starting point. Second, look up your state's WARN list for both the agency and the client company; filings are sometimes listed under only one of them. Third, ask the agency in writing whether you are being laid off or reassigned, and whether the assignment's end is permanent — a reassignment offer changes the picture entirely. Fourth, contact your state's Rapid Response or dislocated-worker unit, which can help whether or not a formal notice was filed.
Finally, keep every document: the assignment offer, any extension notices, pay stubs, and the message ending the assignment. If the work was described as temporary at hiring, that document will matter; if it was not, its absence matters just as much.
Agency work does not remove your rights automatically — but it does make them harder to trace.
Data source: Layoff Atlas
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