At-Will Employment States

Introduction

In at-will employment states, an employer can fire an employee for any reason and at any time, as long as the reason is not illegal. Employees in the United States are entitled to various workplace rights, which entail that employees cannot be denied employment or be fired discriminately due to immutable characteristics such as, but not limited to, race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or veteran status. 

Every state in the U.S. has some form of at-will employment. At-will employment provides certain benefits for both employees and business owners. For example, it gives business owners the ability to reduce their cost of labor quickly, if necessary. On the other hand, it gives employees the ability to be flexible with regard to where they work, especially when it comes to leaving jobs they dislike in order to seek new employment opportunities.

In the event that an employer does terminate the employment of his or her employees in order to reduce labor costs, the employee can typically apply for and collect unemployment benefits so long as the termination of their employment was not caused by any fault of their own. 

Many states also have some form of a public policy exemption, which entails that an employee cannot be fired if firing that employee would violate public policy. For example, an employee could not be fired for refusing to do something that’s illegal in that state, for reporting a violation as a whistleblower, or for performing a civic duty such as attending jury duty.

Learn more about at-will employment by state by exploring the data in the charts.