About
Why this calculator exists.
An independent project that closes the information gap between someone losing their job today and the people who already know what the offer should look like.
The mission
Most people who get laid off have never negotiated a severance package before. They do not know what is typical for their industry or tenure, they do not know which protections their state layers on top of the federal floor, and they cannot tell from the inside whether the number their employer put in front of them is fair, low, or generous. The clock is running, the HR contact is not on their side, and the people who do know — employment attorneys, executive coaches, peers who have been through it — are not in the room. This calculator exists to put the same benchmarks those people use in the hands of anyone with a phone, for free, in 60 seconds.
How we built it
The site is a Next.js application. The severance, tax, WARN, and runway logic all run client-side in your browser; nothing you type is sent to a server. The state-by-state data file — tax rates, unemployment insurance maxes and durations, mini-WARN provisions, severance/UI interaction rules — is refreshed monthly through an automated review process that pulls from the public sources listed in the methodology page.
Open source
The full source code is on GitHub at github.com/tlerias/layoff-calculator. If you spot an error in a state’s tax rate, an outdated mini-WARN threshold, or a bug in the math, open an issue or a pull request.
Maintained by
Independent project. Not affiliated with any law firm or financial services provider. There is no investor, no advisory board, and no commercial relationship that would steer the content toward a particular vendor or outcome.
Contact
For corrections, takedown requests, data-deletion requests, or anything else, email paymefairseverance@gmail.com.
Acknowledgments
This site would not exist without the work of the agencies and organizations that publish the underlying data: the state-level Departments of Labor that maintain authoritative severance and unemployment rules, the National Conference of State Legislatures for tracking mini-WARN law across all 50 states, the Tax Foundation for keeping current tax rate tables publicly available, and Vercel for hosting.
Last reviewed: 2026-04