A few people have asked what the meaning of some of the words and numbers on the ‘Payment History’ page. So here it goes:

 

When you log in to your account and go ‘Unemployment Services’ and then to ‘Payment History’ you see a few different bits of information. Here is a brief overview of what they mean.

Start/Effective Date: The Monday a week before your last day of employment. Unemployment used to be paid only after a week has passed since a person applied for unemployment (called “Waiting week”). Now during Covid-19 that requirement was removed. Instead of reprogramming the unemployment system, they simply entered that you stopped working a week earlier than you really did, thus in effect having the ‘waiting week’ without you having to have an actual waiting week.

This reflects the ‘Last Week Worked’ which you can see underneath all the payments that you already received. The date listed here is the Sunday after the ‘Start/Effective Date’. The ‘Last Week Worked’ used to be called the ‘Waiting Week’. They changed it to ‘Last week worked’ to avoid confusion that people were having when they saw a ‘waiting week’ but then were told that there is no waiting week now during Covid-19.

Benefit Year Ending Date: You are eligible for unemployment for up to one year. This date is the last day you are eligible for unemployment benefits for this claim. You can’t actually claim unemployment for a full year, actually only for 26 weeks, but those 26 weeks need to be claimed within this year. So if you don’t claim for a few weeks, you can still continue to claim up to that date as long as you didn’t use up all 26 weeks.

Weekly Benefit Amount: This is the amount you should be getting each week. This is besides for the extra $600 for April through July 2020.

Maximum Amount Payable: This is your weekly benefit amount x 26. Being that you are able to claim unemployment for 26 weeks, this amount is your maximum payable amount. Again, this does not include the extra $600 for April-July.

Effective Days Remaining: Being that for each day you work in a given week you lose 25% of your benefits, once you work 4 days in a week you lose all your benefits for that week. So each week is in a sense 4 payable days. Every person therefore starts off with 104 payable days (26 x 4 = 104). If you divide your “remaining days” by 4, that should show you your remaining weeks you have.

Note: Is it 26 weeks or 39 weeks?
All the information on the Payment History section is based on being able to collect unemployment benefits for 26 weeks. As part of the CARES Act, an additional 13 payable weeks of unemployment were added to the existing 26 weeks, making for a total of 39 weeks. This is not currently reflected in the ‘Payment History’ section.

I’m curious what they will do to add the 13 weeks. They cannot make everyone’s claim start 13 weeks earlier, because then they will back pay people for those weeks and people won’t be able to certify that they didn’t work for those weeks…. We’ll have to wait and see I guess. Though I’m sure they already had to figure this out for people who were claiming unemployment before Covid-19 and finished their 26 weeks. 

Have any questions? Check out the FAQ page on HomeUnemployed.com or the FAQ posts on this blog. Still stuck? Drop us a line!

<Disclaimer: The info here, as with the rest of the site, is strictly my opinion and not financial advice.>