You left the job, quit, fired, or laid off, it does not matter, and the last paycheck never came. Maybe payroll says it is processing. Maybe your former manager has stopped answering. New York Labor Law treats this situation with unusual clarity: your final wages were due no later than the regular payday for your final pay period, under NYLL § 191. There is no processing-time exception, no exception for employees who left on bad terms, and no exception for employers who want you to come pick up the check in person on their schedule.
What makes New York's wage law genuinely powerful is not the deadline but what stands behind it. Under NYLL § 198(1-a), unpaid wages carry 100% liquidated damages, a doubling, plus attorney fees. An employer sitting on your $2,300 final paycheck is not holding a $2,300 problem; it is holding a problem worth roughly double that before its own legal fees, with your legal fees added on top. Wage claims also carry a six-year lookback, so if the final paycheck problem turns out to be the last chapter of a longer story, unpaid overtime, shorted hours, illegal deductions, those older wages are reachable too.
Accrued vacation deserves its own paragraph, because employers get this wrong constantly. Where an employer's policy or practice provides paid vacation, accrued unused vacation is a wage supplement under NYLL § 198-c, and failing to pay it within thirty days of when it is due is a violation. The common employer response, vacation is use-it-or-lose-it here, is only enforceable if there is a clear written forfeiture policy that was actually communicated to you. No written policy, no forfeiture. Pull out your handbook and read what it actually says; the letter that quotes the employer's own handbook back to it is difficult to answer.
There can be more. If your employer never gave you the pay-rate notice required by the Wage Theft Prevention Act, NYLL § 195, statutory damages of up to $5,000 can be added to the exposure. These add-ons matter less because you will necessarily collect every dollar and more because they change the employer's settlement math: each layer makes stalling more expensive.
The practical playbook is short. Write down your final day worked, your regular payday, and what you were owed: hours, salary balance, commissions, accrued vacation. Gather your pay stubs, the handbook or PTO policy, and any messages about your final pay. Do not sign anything releasing claims in exchange for wages you are already owed, your earned wages are not a bargaining chip. Then make the demand in writing, with the statutes cited and the liquidated damages computed. Most employers, once counsel explains that the doubling and fee-shifting are real, conclude that the check they should have cut on payday is the cheapest possible resolution. If yours does not, the demand letter you sent becomes the first exhibit in a claim the Labor Law was built to make winnable.
Under NYLL § 191, final wages are due no later than the regular payday for your final pay period. There is no processing-time exception.
Your wages are due on the deadline regardless. An employer may not use check pickup logistics to delay payment past the payday.
If the employer's written policy or practice provides vacation, accrued unused vacation is enforceable as a wage supplement under NYLL § 198-c. Forfeiture requires a clear written use-it-or-lose-it policy communicated to you.
Unpaid wages carry 100% liquidated damages plus attorney fees under NYLL § 198(1-a), and a missing pay-rate notice can add Wage Theft Prevention Act damages of up to $5,000.
New York wage claims carry a six-year lookback, so older unpaid wages can be included alongside the final paycheck.