Why this calculator exists.

The mission

Severance negotiations are usually a one-time experience. The benchmarks that determine whether your offer is fair, low, or generous — the typical packages for your industry and tenure, the state-by-state protections that layer on top of federal law, the published peer-company schedules from SEC filings — sit in places that employment attorneys, executive coaches, and HR professionals reach for daily, and that almost no employee has at hand when the clock starts running. This calculator puts those same benchmarks in your hands, for free, in 60 seconds. You bring the context about your situation; we bring the data and the statutes that anchor your counter.

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.

Found an error?

If you spot an error in a state’s tax rate, an outdated mini-WARN threshold, or a bug in the math, email paymefairseverance@gmail.com with the specific number you’re seeing and what you think it should be. State data is reviewed monthly against authoritative public sources, but real-world law moves fast and corrections are welcome.

Built by

Tara Bird is the founder and editor of Layoff Calculator.

I'm a software engineering manager. I am not a licensed attorney. I write occasionally on Medium about engineering leadership; the rest of my professional history sits on LinkedIn.

Layoff Calculator came from a different impulse than my day job. Friends and former colleagues kept getting laid off without access to the same benchmarks and statutory references that the people sitting across the table from them already had. The asymmetry is fixable, and most of the work is plumbing.

The calculator's data layer, citation policy, and trust gates reflect engineering work, not legal practice. Every dollar figure on the site drills to its component math. Every statutory claim cites a working public URL. Nothing paywalled. State data refreshes monthly against authoritative sources, and a build-time test gate refuses to ship if any cited URL fails to resolve. Nothing on this site is legal advice. For legal advice on a specific severance offer, consult an employment attorney licensed in your state.

Independent project. Not affiliated with any law firm or financial services provider. No investor, no advisory board, 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: 2026-05