New Brunswick severance and termination pay (2026): what you're owed when your job ends

When your job ends in New Brunswick, the Employment Standards Act gives you written notice of termination or the payment that replaces it, the vacation pay you've earned, pay for any public holiday still owed, and a deadline for the money. Notice begins only after 6 months, tied with Yukon for the longest waiting period in the country, and it's 2 weeks until your service is longer and 4 weeks after that. Two bands, and that's the whole ladder. There is no separate statutory severance pay, so severance here means the payment in lieu of notice. Vacation pay is 4% of your wages for the vacation pay year, rising to 6% with long service, and everything is due within 21 days of your last day.

Updated September 6, 2026 · Figures verified against the statutes of each jurisdiction · see all figures and their sources

The calculator above is set to New Brunswick's Act; the same tool with a jurisdiction selector is on the severance pay hub. Read the ceiling before you read anything else: 4 weeks is all the Act gives, however long you worked there, so the gap to what a court would award at common law is wider here than almost anywhere.

Who the Act covers, and who is federally regulated instead

The Act binds every employer and employee whose relations fall under the province's own legislative authority, the Crown included (ESA s. 2). Agricultural operations with three or fewer employees are outside it except for the child-labour rules, and the regulation removes professionals and commission salespeople from the public-holiday sections, teachers from the vacation sections, and athletes from both plus the notice part (NB ESA Reg s. 3).

Then the limit that catches the most people, easy to miss because it sits in its own short section: "Sections 30 and 31 apply only where employees are not covered by a collective agreement" (ESA s. 29). If you're unionized, the notice rules on this page are not yours: your collective agreement covers that ground, and a grievance is how you enforce it. And one test comes before all of that: if your employer is in an industry Parliament regulates rather than the province, the Canada Labour Code applies instead. Banks, air transport, railways and interprovincial trucking, telecom, ports and shipping and most Crown corporations belong on the federally regulated page, which has a far longer ladder and a statutory severance pay that New Brunswick doesn't have.

Notice of termination, and the payment in lieu

Section 30 sets both the waiting period and the amount. An employer "shall not terminate or lay off an employee without having given at least" the written notice the section lists, and the first band applies "where the employee has been employed by the employer for a continuous period of employment of six months or more but less than five years" (ESA s. 30). Note the words "or lay off": a layoff needs the same notice as a dismissal. Your period of employment runs from your last hiring and survives any layoff of less than twelve consecutive months (ESA s. 1).

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 30 — Notice of termination or lay off. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. Notice is owed once you have 6 months of continuous service.

Working notice or payment in lieu

Your employer can keep you working through the notice or end the job at once and pay instead: it "may terminate or layoff an employee without notice upon payment in lieu of notice of an amount equal to the pay the employee would have earned during the notice period provided under section 30" (ESA s. 34). If it gives neither the notice nor the money, section 34(2) makes it liable for the same amount anyway.

Two features set the Act apart from its neighbours. It puts no freeze on wages and conditions during the notice period, which Alberta, Manitoba and Nova Scotia all impose. And a notice can expire by being ignored: "Where an employee is given notice of termination or layoff by the employer but continues to work for the employer for a period of one month or more beyond the end of the notice period, the notice is extinguished" (ESA s. 30). Keep you on well past the date it named and your employer has to start again.

Cause has to be in writing here

This is New Brunswick's signature rule, and it's worth knowing before you take your employer's word for why you were let go. Section 30(2) says: "Where an employer dismisses an employee for cause the employer shall do so in writing, setting out the reasons for such action, and, subject to section 31, unless this section is complied with no dismissal without notice is valid notwithstanding that cause for such action exists" (ESA s. 31). A verbal for-cause dismissal doesn't stand, and neither does a letter that gives no reasons, even where the cause was real. Ask for the written statement.

Beyond cause, notice isn't owed if you turned down reasonable alternative employment, if a definite assignment of twelve months or less is completed, if a fixed term ran out and you didn't carry on past it, if you retire under a genuine plan, if you do construction work in the construction industry, or if the job ends in a normal seasonal reduction or shutdown. See what you are still owed when you are fired for cause.

Layoffs

New Brunswick runs no layoff clock: no number of weeks after which a layoff is deemed the end of the job, and no recall mechanism. A layoff simply needs the same notice as a dismissal, with two exceptions in section 31: an employer "may lay off an employee without notice (a) where there is a lack of work, due to any reason unforeseen by the employer at the time notice would otherwise have been given … or (b) for any reason, for a period of up to six days" (ESA s. 31). The first lasts as long as the unforeseen lack of work does. The other jurisdictions are on temporary layoff rules.

A worked example

Take Rémi, seven full years at a Moncton distributor, told on a Tuesday that his position is gone, with no written notice and no written reasons. His regular pay is $980 a week. Seven years puts him in the band worth 4 weeks, so his payment in lieu of notice is $3,920.00. That is the whole statutory notice entitlement, and it would be the same figure at twenty years of service.

There is no separate severance pay in New Brunswick

Only two Canadian jurisdictions have a statutory severance pay on top of notice, Ontario and the federal jurisdiction. What people here call severance is the payment in lieu of notice under section 34 (ESA s. 34), which is what the calculator produces. The two ideas are pulled apart on termination pay versus severance pay.

The statutory figure is a floor, and in this province a low one. A contract or a collective agreement can promise more, and outside Quebec the courts award reasonable notice at common law that is often far above the statutory minimum. This site doesn't calculate it, because the answer turns on your age, your job, your service and how hard a comparable job is to find. Given the size of the gap here, a long-service employee looking at a release should treat an employment lawyer's opinion as part of the decision, not an extra. What you get on this page is the floor underneath that conversation.

Group terminations: two conditions, and a trap in the money

New Brunswick's group rule is not a plain headcount. Section 32 requires both a number and a proportion: "No employer shall terminate or lay off in a four week period more than ten employees if they represent at least twenty-five per cent of the employees of the employer in a four week period without first having given … at least six weeks notice of the termination or layoff" (ESA s. 32).

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 32 — Notice of termination or lay off of more than ten employees. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. When an employer terminates or lays off more than ten employees inside a four-week period, and those people are at least a quarter of its workforce, it must first give six weeks' written notice to the Minister, to every affected employee and to any union. A copy has to be posted where all employees can see it. If a collective agreement requires longer notice, the longer period applies. This does not cover a definite assignment of twelve months or less that has been completed, a retirement under a genuine plan, construction work in the construction industry, or a normal seasonal reduction, closure or shutdown.

Both halves have to be true at once. A small employer that lets a dozen go out of forty is inside the section; a large employer that lets a hundred go out of two thousand is outside it, and each of those hundred keeps only the ordinary section 30 notice. Where it does apply, the notice is served on the affected employees as well as on the Minister and any union, and posted for all to see, and a longer notice in a collective agreement wins. It doesn't cover a completed definite assignment, a retirement under a genuine plan, construction work, or a normal seasonal shutdown.

Now the trap, and it's the thing on this page most likely to cost you money. The group period is worked notice. It doesn't raise what you're paid if the employer skips the notice and pays instead: section 34(1) opens "Notwithstanding sections 30 and 32 an employer may terminate or layoff an employee without notice upon payment in lieu of notice of an amount equal to the pay the employee would have earned during the notice period provided under section 30" (ESA s. 34). Read the last five words. Pay in lieu is measured by your individual section 30 period, 2 weeks or 4 weeks, even in a qualifying group termination, and s. 34(2) measures liability the same way. So 6 weeks actually worked is worth more than the same group termination settled in cash. The comparison is on mass termination and group layoffs.

You owe your employer no notice when you quit

Here the duty runs one way only. The Act asks nothing of an employee who quits, at any length of service: there is no employee notice section, and no other part of the statute imposes one. That was checked by reading the notice part in full and searching the whole consolidation. Two qualifications. Your written contract may still require notice, and the common law may too. And quitting doesn't touch the rest of this page: your vacation pay is owed no matter how the job ends, on the same deadline. How much notice you owe when you quit compares all fourteen jurisdictions, and New Brunswick is the outlier.

Vacation pay on your final pay

New Brunswick runs vacation on a fixed year rather than on your own anniversary, and the calculator has to use it: the vacation pay year runs from July 1 to June 30 (ESA s. 24). Everything you earn inside that window is what the percentage is applied to.

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 24 — Vacation. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. If the job ends part-way through the vacation pay year, your employer owes you 4% of your wages for that year, or 6% if you had eight or more years of continuous employment, and it has to be paid no later than at the same time as your final pay.

The time entitlement has a second part: the weeks in the table or one day for each calendar month you worked in the vacation pay year, whichever is less, so a partial year gives a partial entitlement. The higher percentage arrives only after eight years, one of the longest waits in Canada, shared with Nova Scotia; only Newfoundland and Labrador waits longer. When the job ends part-way through the year, section 26 requires the money "not later than at the same time as the employee's final pay is given" (ESA s. 26). Wages here leave out public holiday pay, vacation pay itself, tips and honoraria (ESA s. 1), and better terms in another Act, an agreement or a custom win out (ESA s. 25).

Back to Rémi. In the vacation pay year that ended with his last day he had earned $28,000 in wages. At seven years his rate is 4%, so the vacation pay on his final cheque is $1,120.00. Once his service passed the eight-year mark, the rate on the same wages would be 6%, or $1,680.00. Being let go, being dismissed for cause and quitting all leave it untouched. The same rule across the country is on vacation pay when your job ends.

Public holidays in your last weeks

New Brunswick's word is public holiday, and the Act's own definition names 8 of them (ESA s. 1). Two are worth flagging: New Brunswick Day is one, and so is Remembrance Day, which sits inside this Act rather than a separate statute, unlike Manitoba and Nova Scotia. The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is not a public holiday here.

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 1 — Definitions (public holiday, pay, wages, period of employment). Reviewed on September 6, 2026. The statute names 8 holidays.

The default is your regular wages for the day (ESA s. 18). The average people remember from other provinces appears only where pay is uneven: "If the wages of an employee vary from day to day, the pay for a public holiday on which the employee has not worked shall be at least equivalent to the employee's average daily earnings exclusive of overtime for the days on which the employee worked during the 30 calendar days" before the holiday (ESA s. 21). It divides by the days you actually worked, not by every day in the month. Work the holiday and you get one and a half times your regular rate for the time worked, plus your regular wages where you were entitled to the holiday with pay (ESA s. 19). Hospitality and continuous operations can give a paid day off later instead.

Eligibility is what bites when a job has been short: the section doesn't apply to an employee who "has been in the employ of their present employer for fewer than ninety days during the previous twelve calendar months immediately preceding a public holiday" (ESA s. 18). You also lose the day if you fail, without reasonable cause, to work your scheduled day before or after it, and casual employees who are free to choose whether to work are outside the section. One rule matters when the job ends: a substituted holiday day still owed has to be paid at your regular wages on top of everything else. All fourteen lists and formulas are on statutory holiday pay by province.

When your final pay has to arrive

Section 37 gives an outside limit and an earlier trigger at once: your employer "shall pay to the employee all outstanding pay not later than at the time the employee would have been paid had the employee continued to be employed, and in no case … beyond twenty-one days after the last day" (ESA s. 37). If your normal pay day falls before that limit, the normal pay day is your deadline.

The same 21 days applies whether you were let go or you quit. Pay is defined broadly, taking in wages, public holiday pay, vacation pay, benefits and checked-off union dues, less lawful deductions (ESA s. 1), so vacation pay for the current vacation pay year and any public holiday pay still owing go in with the rest. The fourteen deadlines are on final pay deadlines by province.

Severance and EI

The permanent rule is that money paid when a job ends delays Employment Insurance: under section 36 of the EI Regulations it counts as earnings and is allocated to the weeks after your last day, so benefits don't start until it runs out. That isn't what's happening right now. A temporary measure switches the allocation off, and the waiting period with it, for benefit periods that begin on or before October 10, 2026, so someone paid a few weeks in lieu of notice can still draw EI from week one. Read the end date rather than the promise.

Apply either way, and apply early. Waiting for a settlement, for your record of employment or for a cheque to clear is not a reason to hold off. New Brunswick's EI regions and a worked example are on the New Brunswick EI page, and the detail is on severance pay and EI.

What the statutory minimum does not include

Three things sit outside everything above, and here the first is usually the largest. Common law notice: outside Quebec a court can award reasonable notice far beyond the minimum, and with a ceiling this low the distance is greater here than almost anywhere; this site doesn't estimate it. Your contract: it can promise more, and the better term wins, though it can never promise less. A collective agreement: section 29 keeps the notice sections away from unionized employees. The Act can't tell you whether your dismissal was lawful or whether a release is a good deal, so take the figure from this page to an employment lawyer. Sergio, the editor of Owed at Work, is not a lawyer, which is why this site publishes its method and its sections instead of an opinion.

How to file a complaint

You have 12 months from the alleged violation, and you may "make a complaint to the Director in any form" (ESA s. 61). Waiting costs money as well as time: the Director's order can only reach back over the twelve months before your complaint (ESA s. 63).

The Director can send the file to mediation or to an employment standards officer, and can order your employer to pay. It costs nothing. The Director won't act where you could grieve the same thing under a collective agreement, or where the matter is before a New Brunswick court, and you can ask for your name to be kept confidential. The form and the instructions are at gnb.ca.