The moment you were never supposed to need. Four things to know before you sign. Evaluate the package. Negotiate the terms. Check for WARN Act violations. Stack severance with unemployment.
Start with the layoff conversation.
What to say. What to ask. What to sign zero of. The tactical playbook for the meeting that just blindsided you. Three sentences in the room. Nine questions before you leave. Federal review windows on your side. Read this first.
Market rate is one to two weeks of pay per year of service. Below that is a lowball. Above that is rare but real. Twenty-six weeks is the usual cap. Read your offer against the benchmark before you sign anything.
You have twenty-one days to review the agreement if you are forty or older. Forty-five for group layoffs. Seven to revoke after signing. Use them all. Ask in writing. More weeks, extended COBRA, pro-rated bonus, accelerated vesting, a reference letter. Pick four. Send one email.
Federal law requires sixty days of written notice before a mass layoff at any company with one hundred or more employees. If your employer gave you less, they violated the WARN Act. That means back pay and benefits for every missed day, up to sixty days, on top of any severance.
Whether severance delays unemployment is decided state by state, and the rule turns on how your state treats the payment: lump sum or salary continuation, and which weeks it is allocated to. Some states offset benefits during the severance period, others do not. Check your own state agency before you file, because this is the detail that most often costs people weeks of benefits.
No. Federal law does not require severance. Full stop. Severance is a private agreement your employer is offering you in exchange for a signed release of legal claims. The one exception is the WARN Act. If your employer violated it, you are owed back pay for the missed notice period whether they offered severance or not.
There is no legal formula and no published benchmark, so treat any number you are quoted as an opening position rather than a standard. Severance is commonly expressed as a number of weeks of base pay per year of service, often with a cap, and larger packages tend to go to executives and long-tenured employees. Health coverage continuation or a COBRA subsidy for a set number of months is frequently included. Ask what formula they used and whether it was applied consistently across the affected group. That question does more than a benchmark would.
If you are forty or older, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act gives you twenty-one days to review the agreement. Forty-five if the layoff affects a group. After you sign, you have seven days to revoke in writing. If you are under forty, there is no federal minimum, but most employers will grant two weeks on request. Ask for it in writing.
Yes. As long as you have not signed. Once you sign, you are bound by the release of claims and the package is final. Before signing, the negotiable items are more weeks of pay, extended COBRA, a pro-rated bonus, accelerated equity vesting, and a written positive reference. Ask for all of them in one email.
It depends on your state, and on whether your severance is paid as a lump sum or as salary continuation. Some states offset your benefits for the weeks severance covers, others pay in full alongside it. Your state unemployment agency publishes its own rule, and that page is the only source worth trusting here. File the day you are laid off regardless. Your state agency will sort out the timing. Do not wait.
For a routine layoff with a package you understand, probably not. For an executive agreement, an unusually large package, or any case that touches discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or whistleblower claims, yes. Many employment lawyers offer a free initial call, and a paid consultation after that is usually billed as a flat fee or an hourly rate you can ask for up front. Ask what the call costs before you book it. One conversation can surface leverage you did not know you had.
This guide is row severance in the Orbyt Career Guides Index, an open dataset of all 12 Orbyt career guides: their sections, the questions each answers, and the steps each publishes. This one answers 6 questions across 5 sections.
CC BY 4.0, attribution required. Cite as: Orbyt Career Guides Index (2026-08-22), https://www.orbytlabs.ai/guides#guides-index Download the JSON.
