I’ve been receiving unemployment insurance benefits, but last week I worked a part-time job. What should I do?
When you complete your next certification, you must report all gross wages you earned. Remember, wages must be reported for the week when you earned them, not when you actually received them. If your gross wages earned in any week are less than your weekly benefit amount, you still may be eligible to receive a full or partial benefit payment.
How much will I receive in benefits if I worked part time?
That depends on how much you earned:
- Your earnings for the week must be less than your weekly benefit amount (not including your dependent allowance).
- Any wages earned that are greater than 50% of your weekly benefit amount will be deducted from your unemployment insurance benefits for that week.
- If you earned less than 50% of your weekly benefit amount, you can receive your full amount of unemployment insurance benefits for that week.
- If the partial benefit amount does not come to an even dollar, it is raised to the next higher dollar, as long as it does not exceed your weekly benefit amount.
For example:
If your weekly benefit amount (not including dependent allowance) is… | $110.00 |
50% of that amount is… | $55.00 |
If your earnings are… | $76.50 |
The amount that exceeds 50% of your weekly benefit amount is… | $21.50 |
The difference between your weekly benefit amount… | $110.00 |
And the amount of your earnings that exceeds 50% of your weekly benefit amount… | $21.50 |
Gives you a partial benefit amount of… | $88.50 |
Raised to the next highest dollar… | $89.00 |
What happens if I go back to work full time?
If you work full time, you are ineligible because you are not unemployed even if your earnings for the week are less than your weekly benefit amount. When you complete your next certification, report that you have returned to work by entering your earnings.
For more information on partial benefits, see the Unemployment Insurance Benefits Handbook
You may receive some UI benefits for a week if you work less than full time. You must continue to look for and be able to work. You must report your gross wages (wages before deductions) earned each week and not just take home pay. To report your earnings for the week, simply add the total hours you worked Sunday through Saturday for the week for which you are requesting payment and multiply your total hours worked by your hourly rate of pay. For
example if you worked a total of 12 hours at a rate of $8.50 per hour, you would report $102 in earnings for the week (12 hours x $8.50/hour = $102). The benefits paid when working less than full time will be reduced. To calculate your partial unemployment benefits, take your weekly wages and subtract $20 or 20 percent of your weekly benefit amount (WBA), whichever is greater. That amount is your deduction, which will be subtracted from your WBA and rounded down to an even
dollar amount. See example below. Any withholding for federal taxes, etc., is taken from this amount. Check out the DES online partial benefit calculator.Example: Weekly Benefit Amount:
Allowable Wages: $279.00 x 20%=
$279.00
$55.80
Wages for the Week (Rounded up to the next whole dollar)
Minus Allowable Wages of $20 or 20%
Wages to be Deducted from Your Weekly Benefit Amount
Pay Amount for the Week: $279.00 WBA - $46.20 =
Pay Amount to You (Rounded down to the next lower dollar):
$102.00
- 55.80
$46.20
$232.80
$232.00
You can work part-time and still receive partial unemployment benefits. It is possible to accept temporary part-time work without losing all unemployment benefits. As long as you continue to meet your responsibilities for receiving benefits, you may be able to earn wages from part-time work and still collect a partial benefit (including the weekly federal $300) while building up to your normal weekly hours.
You can use the following Excel sheet to help calculate how many hours a week you could work and still collect partial benefits based on your weekly earnings:
- Download the Excel spreadsheet
There is also a video that explains how a partial benefit works: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ix3-614tU8