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

When your job ends in the Northwest Territories, the Employment Standards Act sets the floor, and it starts higher than most. Once you have 90 days of employment your employer owes you 2 weeks of written notice, rising a week at a time to 8 weeks, or termination pay instead, and here that pay is measured in wages and benefits. There is no separate statutory severance pay in the NWT: what people call severance is that termination pay. The vacation pay you've built up is owed on top, at 4% of your wages and 6% once your service is long enough, and all the wages you earned have to reach you within 10 days of the termination.

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

The severance pay hub covers all fourteen Canadian jurisdictions; the calculator above is set to the territory's Act. Give it your first and last day, your regular pay and how the job ended, and it runs the schedules below against your own dates.

Who the Act covers here, and who is federally regulated instead

The Act applies to every employer and employee in the Northwest Territories, subject to exemptions made by regulation, and it binds the territorial government as an employer. It doesn't apply to employees as defined in the Public Service Act, and the hours-of-work and overtime sections leave out employees working mainly in a managerial capacity, though the termination rules still reach them (NWT ESA s. 3).

Everything in the Act is a floor rather than a ceiling: any benefit, obligation or duty equal to or better than the Act, including a common law right or a term of your contract, still stands and has to be honoured. Employment is also deemed continuous through a sale, lease, transfer, merger or receivership, so a change of owner doesn't reset your service.

One test comes before all of that. If your employer is in an industry Parliament regulates rather than the territory, the Canada Labour Code applies instead: banks, air transport, interprovincial trucking, telecom, and most Crown corporations. Those jobs belong on the federally regulated page.

The Act is only half the picture here, because the Employment Standards Regulations lift four groups out of the notice rule before the Act's own exceptions even apply: anyone employed in the construction industry, anyone working seasonally or intermittently for less than 180 days in a year, anyone hired for a definite term or task of up to 365 days that simply runs out, and anyone employed for less than 25 hours a week (NWT ESR s. 4.1). If you're in one of those four, no notice and no termination pay are owed under the Act at all, however long you worked there, and the schedule below is not your floor.

The regulations also take students in a school work program out of the Act entirely. Everything else on this page, vacation pay and statutory holidays included, still applies to you unless the regulation says otherwise.

Notice of termination, and the pay that replaces it

Section 37 sets the threshold: "No employer shall terminate the employment of an employee who has been employed by that employer for a period of 90 days or more, unless the employer (a) gives the employee a written notice of termination … or (b) pays the employee termination pay" (NWT ESA s. 37). Below 90 days, nothing is owed. Separate stretches with the same employer count as one period if the gap between them was short, so a recall after a break may not start you over (NWT ESA s. 38).

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 38 — Period of notice. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. Notice is owed once you have 90 days of continuous service.

Read the statute's own words for the schedule, because they trip people up. Notice must be given "by a period of at least two weeks plus one additional week for each year of employment over two years, to a maximum of eight weeks" (NWT ESA s. 38). It says over two years, not three, but the extra week is only earned on completing a further year, so the arithmetic lands on the floor of 2 weeks until you finish your third year, and then a week a year to the ceiling. The table above is that arithmetic worked out. If your employer quotes the sentence at you and reaches a different number, this is where the disagreement comes from.

Termination pay here includes benefits

Most statutes measure pay in lieu in wages alone. This one doesn't. Termination pay "must be equal to the wages and benefits to which the employee would have been entitled, if the employee had worked his or her usual hours of work for each week of the period for which notice would otherwise be required by subsection 38(2)" (NWT ESA s. 39). If you had a health plan, a housing or travel allowance or another benefit with a value attached to it, that value belongs in the calculation, and it is worth pricing before you agree to a number.

While notice is running, your employer can't cut your wages or wage rate or change any term or condition of the job, and it has to keep paying wages and providing benefits at least equal to what you'd have had working your usual hours, whether or not any work is actually required or performed (NWT ESA s. 38). The notice period can't be made to overlap your annual vacation, and if you keep working past the date in the notice, the notice is void and a fresh one is needed.

When no notice is owed, and constructive termination

Notice isn't owed to an employee who is on temporary layoff, who works in an activity exempted by regulation, whose employment is terminated for just cause, who refused an offer of reasonable alternative work from the same employer, or who is on temporary layoff and doesn't come back within seven days of a written request (NWT ESA s. 37). Just cause is what your employer has to establish, not what it gets to declare.

The Act also runs the argument the other way. An Employment Standards Officer can declare that a termination happened where the employer substantially altered a condition of employment to push the employee out (NWT ESA s. 40). If your pay, hours or duties were cut until leaving was the only option, that's the section to raise.

Temporary layoff, and the day it counts from

An employer that wants to lay you off temporarily has to give written notice saying when you're expected back. "Subject to section 43, a temporary layoff must not exceed 45 days during a period of 60 consecutive days" (NWT ESA s. 42), a shorter and tighter window than Yukon's. Lay someone off without that written notice and the employer is deemed to have terminated them; go past the limit and the employment is deemed terminated on the last day of the layoff, with termination pay owing (NWT ESA s. 43). An Employment Standards Officer can order an extension for special circumstances where you really will be recalled. Temporary layoff rules compares the fourteen.

A worked example

Alanna has seven full years at a Yellowknife supplier and is let go with no notice. Her regular pay is $1,200 a week. Seven years puts her in the band worth 7 weeks, so her termination pay starts at $8,400.00 in wages, before the value of the benefits she would have kept during those weeks is added on top.

There is no separate severance pay in the Northwest Territories

The word severance does not appear in the territory's Act. Only Ontario and the federal jurisdiction have a statutory severance pay sitting on top of notice. Here, severance is the termination pay defined in section 39, the wages and benefits for the notice period you should have had, and that is what the calculator produces.

Section 4 preserves any right or benefit better than the Act, including a common law right, so a written contract can promise more. Outside Quebec the courts also award reasonable notice at common law, often well above the statutory minimum. This site doesn't calculate that and gives no ranges: it turns on your age, your job, your service and how hard a comparable job is to find in a small labour market. If a release has been put in front of you, that's where an employment lawyer earns their fee. See common law notice versus the statutory minimum.

Group terminations

Section 41 catches an employer that "wishes to terminate the employment of 25 or more employees at one time, or within a period not exceeding four weeks", and it then has to give a copy of the notice of termination to the Employment Standards Officer and to any trade union the employees may belong to (NWT ESA s. 41). The union copy is the difference from Nunavut, where only the officer is told.

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 41 — Notice to Employment Standards Officer (group termination). Reviewed on September 6, 2026. An employer ending 25 or more jobs at once, or inside four weeks, must send a copy of the notice of termination to the Employment Standards Officer and to any union the employees belong to, four, eight, twelve or sixteen weeks ahead depending on the numbers. No one can be let go before that period expires. This duty sits on top of the ordinary individual notice, though one notice may serve both if it satisfies both periods. The Officer can waive the group period for an unforeseen event beyond the employer's control, such as a major breakdown, climatic or economic conditions, or a declared emergency, but only if the employer took real care to foresee and avoid the cause.

Nobody can be let go before that period expires, and the duty sits on top of the ordinary individual notice, though one notice may serve both if it satisfies both periods. The Officer can waive the group period for an unforeseen event beyond the employer's control, such as a major breakdown, climatic or economic conditions or a declared emergency, but only if the employer took real care to foresee and avoid the cause (NWT ESA s. 41). Mass termination and group layoffs has the other thirteen.

If you quit, you owe no notice

This is one of the shortest sections on the page, because the Act has nothing to say. Part 4 puts duties on employers only: section 37 speaks to what an employer must do, the words resign and quit don't appear in the Act, and nothing in it lets an employer deduct anything from your pay because you left without warning (NWT ESA s. 37). A written contract may still ask you for notice, and that's a contract question rather than an employment standards one. Your vacation pay is owed either way. How much notice you owe when you quit shows which jurisdictions do impose one.

Vacation pay on your final pay

Vacation pay accrues as a percentage of your annual wages, and the rate steps up with service.

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 24 — Annual vacation. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. If you stop working for any reason before finishing a year of employment, the employer must pay you without delay the vacation pay owing for every completed year plus the vacation pay for the completed part of the current year. Vacation pay must otherwise be paid at least one day before the vacation starts.

Years with the same employer count toward that step even if they weren't continuous, as long as they fall inside a ten-year window, which matters in a territory where people leave and come back to the same operation (NWT ESA s. 24). "Wages" takes in every form of pay for work performed but leaves out tips. When you stop working for any reason before finishing a year of employment, your employer has to pay you "without delay" the vacation pay owing for every completed year plus the vacation pay for the completed part of the current year (NWT ESA s. 25). "Without delay" is a stricter standard than the ten days that applies to your other wages.

Back to Alanna. Since her last vacation payout she had earned $42,000 in wages. At her length of service the rate is 6%, so $2,520.00 is owing, on top of the termination pay. Being let go doesn't reduce it, and neither does quitting. The rule across the country is on vacation pay when your job ends.

Statutory holidays in your last weeks

The Act calls them statutory holidays and names 11, one of the longest lists in Canada. One of them has no name at all: the Act simply says the first Monday in August (NWT ESA s. 22). A holiday that falls inside your notice period is a paid day like any other, because you're still employed until the notice runs out.

Source: Employment Standards Act, s. 22 — Holiday with pay (list of statutory holidays). Reviewed on September 6, 2026. The statute names 11 holidays.

If your wages are worked out on a time basis, holiday pay is what you'd have earned at your regular rate for your normal hours. If they're worked out any other way, it is "his or her daily wages, based on the average of his or her daily wages for the four weeks that the employee worked immediately preceding the week in which the statutory holiday occurs" (NWT ESA s. 23). Work the holiday and your employer also has to pay overtime for the hours worked, or give you a substitute day off no later than your next vacation or the end of the job.

You lose the pay for a holiday you didn't work in only three cases: you haven't worked at least thirty days for that employer in the previous twelve months, you were required to work the holiday and didn't show up, or without your employer's consent you didn't report on your last regular working day before or after it (NWT ESA s. 23). Holiday pay keeps running through sick leave, bereavement leave and short family violence, emergency or court leaves, though not through pregnancy, parental, compassionate, family caregiver or reservist leave. Statutory holiday pay by province has the rest.

When your final pay has to arrive

Section 13(3) is plain: "If the employment of an employee is terminated, the employer shall, within 10 days after the termination, pay to the employee all wages earned by the employee" (NWT ESA s. 13). The same 10 days applies whether you were let go or you quit, because the section covers any termination of employment. A salaried employee whose job ends has to be paid the hourly equivalent of the salary for every hour worked and not yet paid, and vacation pay is due without delay on top. Final pay deadlines by province puts the fourteen side by side.

Severance and EI

The permanent rule is that money paid when a job ends delays Employment Insurance. Under EI Regulations section 36, money paid because the job ended, whether it's called severance, termination pay, a closure bonus or unused vacation pay, counts as earnings and is allocated to the weeks after your last day at the rate of a normal working week, so benefits begin only when it runs out (EI Regulations s. 36). It delays your benefits; it doesn't take weeks away from you.

That isn't what happens 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 several weeks of termination pay can still draw EI from the start of the claim. Read the end date rather than the promise: an extension is a decision someone has to make, and nothing here assumes one.

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. The territory's EI regions, the hours they ask for and a worked example are on the Northwest Territories Employment Insurance page; the interaction in detail is on severance pay and EI.

What the statutory minimum does not include

• Common law notice. Outside Quebec a court can award reasonable notice far above the statutory minimum, and section 4 leaves that right alone in so many words. This site doesn't estimate it and gives no ranges.
• Your contract. A written contract can promise more notice, more vacation or better benefits during notice. It can't promise less.
• A collective agreement. If you're unionized, your agreement governs most of this and your remedy is a grievance rather than a complaint to the Officer.

The Act also can't tell you whether your dismissal was lawful, whether the just cause your employer alleges holds up, or whether a release is a good deal. Take the figure from this page to an employment lawyer and ask there. 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

The window here is twice Yukon's: "A complaint may be made at any time within 12 months after the date on which the subject matter of the complaint occurred" (NWT ESA s. 61), so you have 12 months from the thing you're complaining about, not from the day you found out about it.

You complain in writing to the Employment Standards Officer, free of charge, if you weren't paid what you're owed, weren't reinstated after a leave, or had a condition of employment changed or your job ended contrary to the Act. The Officer can turn down a complaint that is frivolous, unsupported or already being dealt with elsewhere. One detail is worth planning around. An order can cover wages for the twelve months before the order or your termination, but vacation pay and holiday pay for the two years before it (NWT ESA s. 65), so an old vacation pay shortfall may still be recoverable when old wages are not. The Employment Standards Office of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment runs the process, and the instructions are at ece.gov.nt.ca.