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

When your job ends in Nunavut, the Labour Standards Act sets the floor. Reach 90 days of employment and your employer owes you 2 weeks of written notice, stepping up a week at a time to 8 weeks, or termination pay in its place, counted in wages and benefits. No separate statutory severance pay exists here: what Nunavut calls severance is that termination pay. On top of it comes the vacation pay you have built up, at 4% of your wages and 6% once your service is long enough, and the wages you earned must all reach you within 10 days of the termination. One feature has no parallel anywhere else in Canada: the Act sets no deadline at all for reporting unpaid wages.

Updated October 20, 2026 · Figures verified against the statutes of each jurisdiction · see all figures and their sources · what's new

The severance pay hub covers all fourteen Canadian jurisdictions; the calculator above is set to Nunavut's Act. Enter your first day and your last, your regular pay and the way the job ended, and it applies the schedules below to your own dates.

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

The Act covers employment connected with the operation of an industrial establishment, which it defines broadly as any work, undertaking or business of a local or private nature in Nunavut, along with the employees and employers involved. It leaves out trappers, people engaged in commercial fisheries, members and students of professions designated by regulation, and employment in the public service, and the hours-of-work Part doesn't apply to employees working mainly in a managerial capacity (Nunavut LSA s. 2). Where the two sides disagree about whether the Act applies at all, the Labour Standards Officer decides, so that's a question to put in writing rather than to argue out with your employer.

Section 3 keeps alive any more favourable right you have under another law, a custom, a contract or an arrangement. And one test comes before everything else: if your employer is in an industry Parliament regulates rather than the territory, the Canada Labour Code applies instead, which takes in banks, air transport, telecom, and most Crown corporations. Those workplaces are covered on the federally regulated page.

The Act is only half the picture here. Four groups are lifted out of the notice rule by the Notice of Termination Exemption Regulations, before the Act's own exceptions even come into play: construction industry employees; seasonal or intermittent employees who work fewer than 180 days in a year; employees taken on for a definite term or task of 365 days or less that simply expires; and employees who work fewer than 25 hours a week (Nunavut Notice of Termination Exemption Regulations s. 1). If one of those four describes your job, the Act requires neither notice nor termination pay from your employer, however many years you put in, and the schedule below is not your floor. The Northwest Territories carries the same instrument as section 4.1 of its own regulations, which is why the two territories read alike.

Notice of termination, and the pay that replaces it

Section 14.03 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 notice of termination; or (b) pays the employee termination pay" (Nunavut LSA s. 14.03). Short of 90 days, your employer owes nothing. Two separate stretches with the same employer count as a single period where the break between them was brief, so being recalled after a gap does not always reset your service.

Source: Labour Standards Act, s. 14.03 — Termination of employment and notice. Reviewed on September 5, 2026. Notice is owed once you have 90 days of continuous service.

How we read the Act. The Act owes notice once you have been employed "for a period of 90 days or more" and does not say how to count the days. We count every calendar day from your first day to your last day, both included, so a job that ran from April 2 to June 30 is 90 days and earns notice, and one day less does not. If your count lands within a day or two of 90, confirm with the Labour Standards Compliance Office. (Nunavut LSA s. 14.03)

The statute builds that table out of one sentence. An employer must "give the employee written notice of termination of not less than (i) two weeks, if the employee has been employed by the employer for less than three years, and (ii) an additional week for each additional year of employment, to a maximum of eight weeks" (Nunavut LSA s. 14.03). The notice has to state the day it's given and the day the job ends, so a vague warning that layoffs are coming is not notice.

Termination pay here includes benefits

Termination pay is the wages and benefits you'd have been entitled to had you worked your usual hours for every week of the notice period, and section 14.10 deems it to be wages for every purpose of the Act, so it's protected and enforced exactly like your regular pay (Nunavut LSA s. 14.03). A health plan, a housing allowance or any other benefit with a dollar value attached counts in the calculation. Put a figure on it before you accept an offer built on wages alone.

While the notice runs, your employer cannot reduce your pay or your wage rate, and cannot alter any other term or condition of the job; it must go on paying you wages and benefits at least equal to what your usual hours would have brought in, whether or not it gives you anything to do (Nunavut LSA s. 14.08). Your annual vacation cannot be made to run inside the notice period, and a notice you work past is void.

When no notice is owed, and constructive termination

No notice is owed to an employee on temporary layoff, to one working in an activity the regulations exempt, to one dismissed for just cause, to one who turned down an offer of reasonable alternative work, or to one on temporary layoff who fails to return within seven days of a written request (Nunavut LSA s. 14.04). Just cause is something your employer has to prove, not something it can simply assert.

The Act can be run the other way as well. Where an employer has substantially altered a condition of employment to discourage the employee from staying, the Labour Standards Officer can declare that a termination took place (Nunavut LSA s. 14.08). Cite that section if your pay, your hours or your duties were cut back until leaving was the only choice left.

Temporary layoff, and the day it counts from

A temporary layoff is an interruption "not exceeding 45 days of layoff in a period of 60 consecutive days", or a longer one if the employer recalls you within a time the Labour Standards Officer fixes (Nunavut LSA s. 14.01). Your employer has to give written notice of the layoff saying when you're expected back, and without that notice it is deemed to have terminated you (Nunavut LSA s. 14.05). If the layoff runs past the limit, your employment is deemed to have ended on the last day of it and termination pay is owed (Nunavut LSA s. 14.06). The limits everywhere else are in temporary layoff rules.

A worked example

Elisapee has seven full years with an Iqaluit supplier when she is let go without notice. She earns $1,300 a week. At seven years she sits in the band worth 7 weeks, which puts her termination pay at $9,100.00 in wages before anything is added for the benefits she would have kept over those weeks.

There is no separate severance pay in Nunavut

Nunavut's Act never uses the word severance. A statutory severance pay stacked on top of notice exists in only two places in Canada: Ontario and the federal jurisdiction. In Nunavut, severance means the termination pay under section 14.03(4), the wages and benefits for the notice period you should have had, and that is the figure the calculator produces.

Section 3 keeps any more favourable right alive, so a contract that promises you more still stands. Courts outside Quebec award reasonable notice at common law as well, frequently far beyond the statutory floor. This site puts no number on that and offers no ranges: it depends on your age, your job, your years of service and how easy a comparable job is to find where you live. If someone has put a release in front of you, that is the point at which an employment lawyer earns their fee. There is more on common law notice versus the statutory minimum.

Group terminations

Section 14.07 catches an employer that "wishes to terminate the employment of 25 or more employees at one time or within any period not exceeding four weeks", and it must then give the Labour Standards Officer written notice, over and above the notice owed to each employee individually (Nunavut LSA s. 14.07).

Source: Labour Standards Act, s. 14.07 — Notice to Labour Standards Officer (group termination). Reviewed on September 5, 2026. An employer ending 25 or more jobs at once, or inside four weeks, must give the Labour Standards Officer four, eight, twelve or sixteen weeks of written notice depending on how many people are affected, on top of each employee's own notice. None of those terminations can take effect until that period has expired. Unlike some jurisdictions, the Act does not require a copy to the union.

None of those terminations can take effect until that period has expired. Unlike the Northwest Territories, whose Act this one closely resembles, Nunavut doesn't require a copy of the notice to go to the union: the officer alone is told. If your workplace is unionized, that means nobody outside the employer has to tell your representatives, so tell them yourself. The remaining thirteen jurisdictions are covered on mass termination and group layoffs.

If you quit, you owe no notice

The Act asks nothing of an employee who quits. Part II.1 puts every duty on the employer, and nothing in it lets your employer keep back pay because you walked out without warning (Nunavut LSA s. 14.03). Your contract may still call for notice, and that is a matter of contract law, not employment standards. Your vacation pay is still owed. The jurisdictions that do require notice from you are listed on how much notice you owe when you quit.

Vacation pay on your final pay

Vacation pay is a percentage of the wages you earned during the year of employment the vacation belongs to, and the rate follows your entitlement to time off.

Source: Labour Standards Act, s. 16 — Annual vacation with pay. Reviewed on September 5, 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 four or six per cent, whichever rate applies to you, of the wages you earned in the completed part of the current year.

Service with the same employer counts toward the higher band even when it was broken, provided the years fall inside a ten-year window (Nunavut LSA s. 16). The Act deems vacation pay to be wages for all of its purposes, so it is protected exactly as your regular pay is. If the employment ends for any reason before you complete a year of employment, the vacation pay owing for each completed year, plus the applicable percentage on the wages you earned in the part-year, has to be paid "without delay" (Nunavut LSA s. 19). "Without delay" sets a tighter standard than the deadline that governs the rest of your wages.

Elisapee again. Her wages since her last vacation payout came to $45,000. The rate at her length of service is 6%, which leaves $2,700.00 owing on top of the termination pay. Neither being let go nor quitting cuts that amount. Vacation pay when your job ends gives the rule for the rest of the country.

General holidays in your last weeks

Nunavut calls them general holidays and names 11. Nunavut Day is the territory's own and no other jurisdiction has it. The Act doesn't include National Indigenous Peoples Day, and it names Victoria Day the long way around, as the day fixed by the Governor General for the reigning sovereign's birthday (Nunavut LSA s. 1). A holiday landing inside your notice period is paid like any other, since your employment runs to the end of the notice.

Source: Labour Standards Act, s. 1 — Definitions, including "general holiday". Reviewed on September 5, 2026. The statute names 11 holidays.

Where your wages are calculated on a time basis, holiday pay equals what your normal hours at your regular rate would have paid. If they're worked out any other way, the section says the employee is to "be paid at least the equivalent of 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 general holiday occurs" (Nunavut LSA s. 24). Work the holiday and you get at least time and a half for the hours worked on top of the holiday pay, or a substituted paid day off no later than your next vacation or the end of the job. That premium is where Nunavut parts company with the Northwest Territories, which pays overtime rates instead.

A holiday you did not work goes unpaid in four cases: you have not put in at least thirty days with that employer over the previous twelve months; you were called in for the day and did not report; you missed your last regular working day before or after it without your employer's consent; or you are on pregnancy or parental leave (Nunavut LSA s. 28). A holiday falling on a day you do not work is still owed, either as pay or as a paid day off taken before your next vacation or the end of the job. The other thirteen jurisdictions are on statutory holiday pay by province.

When your final pay has to arrive

Section 50(3) puts it plainly: "Where the employment of an employee is terminated, the employer shall, within 10 days after the termination of the employment, pay to the employee all wages earned by the employee" (Nunavut LSA s. 50). That same 10 days runs whether the job ended by dismissal or by your resignation, because the section speaks to any termination of employment. Vacation pay, holiday pay and termination pay are each deemed by the Act to be wages, so they're owed and enforced the same way, and unpaid wages become a lien and a secured debt against the employer's property in favour of the Labour Standards Board. The deadline in each of the fourteen jurisdictions is on final pay deadlines by province.

Severance and EI

As a rule, money paid out when a job ends pushes Employment Insurance back. Section 36 of the EI Regulations counts anything paid because the job ended as earnings, whatever it is called: a closure bonus, severance, termination pay or unused vacation pay. That money is spread over the weeks following your last day at the rate of a normal working week, so your benefits start only once it is used up (EI Regulations s. 36). It puts your benefits off; it does not cost you weeks.

That is not the position today. For benefit periods beginning on or before October 9, 2027, a temporary measure turns the allocation off along with the waiting period, so a worker paid several weeks of termination pay can still collect EI from the first week of the claim. Go by the end date, not by the expectation: extending it takes a decision, and nothing on this page assumes one will be made.

File your claim either way, and file it early. A settlement still being negotiated, a record of employment that has not arrived, a cheque that has not cleared: none of these is a reason to wait. Nunavut's EI regions, the hours they ask for and a worked example are on the Nunavut Employment Insurance page, and the interaction is set out in full on severance pay and EI.

What the statutory minimum does not include

• Common law notice. Outside Quebec a court can award reasonable notice well beyond the statutory minimum. No estimate and no range for it appears anywhere on this site.
• Your contract. Your contract can offer more notice, longer vacation or better benefits through the notice period, and section 3 keeps the better term alive. What it cannot do is offer less.
• A collective agreement. Where you are unionized, the agreement governs most of this, and your route is a grievance rather than a report to the officer.

What the Act cannot settle is whether your dismissal was lawful, whether the just cause your employer alleges will hold up, or whether a release is a good deal. Bring the figure from this page to an employment lawyer and put those questions there. Sergio, editor of Owed at Work, is not a lawyer, and that is why the site publishes its method and its sections rather than an opinion.

How to report unpaid wages: there is no deadline

This is the part of Nunavut's Act with no equal in Canada. Every other province and territory sets a limitation period for a labour standards complaint. Nunavut sets none. Section 53(1) says the Labour Standards Officer "may, at any time" make a certificate setting out the wages owing (Nunavut LSA s. 53). There is no window you can miss, and an old shortfall is not automatically out of reach.

Two qualifications belong with that. The only limitation period in the Act is on prosecutions, which must be started within two years (Nunavut LSA s. 70), and no statute can conjure up records your employer no longer has. The practical advice is the same as everywhere else: report early, while pay stubs, schedules and the people who remember your hours are still around.

The process itself is a certificate rather than a hearing. The officer issues one for what's owed and mails it to the employer, which then has thirty days to answer. The Labour Standards Board investigates, holds any hearing it thinks advisable, and either confirms the certificate or cancels it and issues another. A confirmed certificate can be filed with the Nunavut Court of Justice and enforced as a judgment, and a point of law can be appealed to a judge. Inspectors can also settle an underpayment of minimum wage, overtime, vacation pay or holiday pay by written agreement. The Labour Standards Compliance Office runs the process, and its forms are at nu-lsco.ca.