Unemployment Insurance
Both state governments and the United States federal governments offer unemployment insurance benefits. Unemployment insurance (“UI”) payments are available to individuals who are forced to work reduced hours or have lost their job through no fault of their own. The job loss can be due to any number of reasons, including broad layoffs, company closure or liquidation or some type of bankruptcy reorganization. Benefits are meant to provide a temporary form of help while people have to bridge the gap between the job loss or work hour reduction and the new job that you will (hopefully) find in the near future. Unfortunately, the time between losing your job or having your weekly work hours reduced and the time you find a new or improved job has been much longer than expected for millions of Americans over the past few years due to the delayed economic recovery in the country. With the slow economic recovery and the US unemployment rates hovering stubbornly above 9 percent people are looking into whether they can receive unemployment insurance now more than ever. Here is a look at how these benefits work.
Basic Requirements
If you are filing your initial application for benefits you will need to locate your local social services of department of labor in your particular state. To have your unemployment insurance claims approved, your state will want you to be physically and mentally ready, willing and able to find a new job. Most states will force you to submit a weekly statement before you can receive the next week’s benefits to oversee that you are meeting this particular requirement. Few states really have a specific set of guidelines when it comes to how many applications you need to submit each week, but you want to clearly demonstrate a pattern of attempts to replace the unemployment insurance income with wages from a new employer.
Beyond the job search reporting requirement, you need to show that you earned a sufficient amount of income up until the time that you needed to submit UI claims applications. In almost all states, the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters and your attendant earnings in those four quarters, are examined to see if you have met this requirement. Some states want you to have earned a flat minimal amount while others want any type of income earned in a certain number of those four calendar quarters. Check with your state’s social welfare office for more information on this particular area of the law.
Extended Benefits
Your state unemployment insurance benefits will be exhausted after you have received benefits for a predefined number of unemployment claim weeks. In most cases the number of weeks will range between 13 and 26. You have the option of filing (or some states will automatically enroll you in) federal unemployment benefits extension programs, where you can potentially receive an additional 53 weeks of extended unemployment benefits. If you need assistance after those 53 weeks have expired you can sometimes receive one more round of state-funded unemployment insurance (with some states providing up to 20 more weeks of coverage) before your total amount of benefits are exhausted.
In Conclusion
As you can clearly see from this article, the results of your particular case will depend on what state your are in and what type of employment you had before you filed an unemployment benefits application. Contact your state’s respective department of labor for more information.
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