Prologue

Due to high levels of unemployment, the Government proffers benefits that help unemployed people during hard times.

However, the amount is based upon your prior employment opportunities and certain other factors.

So in case, your employer fires you, many questions may arise in your mind. How do I get my unemployment money? What important factors should I keep in mind?

But before answering such questions, let us know more about unemployment insurance.

Unemployment Insurance (UI) Program

The state passed the Social Security Act in the year 1935, which established created the Unemployment Insurance Program.

This federal-state program helps the unemployed workers by providing them with a part of their wages as financial assistance.

The compensation and benefits depend upon the state in which the applicant resides. But generally, the applicants get the help for 26 weeks.

Such payment primarily entails half of the prior salaries of the applicants.

The federal-state partnership programs depend upon the payroll taxes. Hence, they help people who are involuntarily unemployed and meet the various qualifications needed to claim the benefits.

During times of an economic crisis, the unemployment insurance program helps workers by providing financial impetus to reduce their hardship.

Qualifications for The Program

Not all the applicants who apply for unemployment benefits can procure them. This is because the program does not entail various individuals, like:

• People who voluntarily resigned from the organization
• People who are looking for their first job
• People who are reinitiating their business in the labor field after quitting it voluntarily
• Students
• People who do not have any legal documents to work
• Freelancers, self-employed, or gig workers

Not only this, but the applicants should meet specific other qualifications of their respective states.

For example, individuals need to earn according to the state’s requirements or have worked for a particular time period for their previous employer.

Variations led to more discrepancies between the people who procured the benefits from different states.

The lowest amount that a person got per week was $213 in Mississippi. On the other hand, the highest amount went to $555 in Massachusetts.

Funding for Unemployment Insurance

If you are an unemployed citizen, then you must understand the answer to the next question. Where does my unemployment money come from?

This is because the funding of unemployment decides the amount proffered to the unemployed.

The agency to fund the UI is the Federal Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund. It not only supports the program but also takes care of its other attributes.

For example, the agency takes care of unemployment costs and lends loans to state UI funds. It also finances half of the additional benefits during any crisis.

Since UI is a federal-state program, the States and territories set their attributes, keeping the guidelines of the federal government in mind.

Such protocols entail the payroll tax rates or prior wages of the unemployed people.

But in the end, it is the employers who pay the UI taxes to the federal UI Trust Fund.

The states have separate accounts at the federal UI Trust Fund that helps them to procure unemployment insurance benefits.

Cost to An Employer

Many people speculate that various employees pay for the funds of the UI benefits. Such funds relate to Medicare or Social Security funds.

But in reality, it is the employers who are responsible for the costs of the benefits. Moreover, the prices are higher than the amount of unemployment compensation proffered to the unemployed.

However, three states fund the benefits from the employees. These states include Pennsylvania, Alaska, and New Jersey. But, the cost of such benefits is minimal.

There are other factors that deduce the cost of an individual’s unemployment insurance benefits.

Such factors refer to the prior wage of the employee, the time duration of being unemployed, and the amount of state service.

The government pays an individual the average unemployment claim of $378 per week. However, this amount can even reach the $1000 mark or more, depending on your state.

There are two methods of claiming money from the employer. First of all, the state can debit the employer’s UI account. Such states have an account balance of the employers.

Secondly, the state government can augment the unemployment taxes of employers.

There may be a change in the ratio of the taxable payroll and the account balance. In such cases, the reduction of the account balance can augment the rate.

So, any changes in even one claim for the employers’ account can significantly result in boosting the tax rate in the future.

Hence, the cost of an individual’s insurance benefit has a lower impact and thus, is not the main factor. The primary factor is the tax rate, which proffers a long term effect.

The state fixes the tax rate based on three years. So, the effect of a single unemployment claim is sighted until three years in the unemployment insurance tax rate.

This makes it difficult for employers to know the impact of a single claim on the UI tax rate.

In three years, an unemployment insurance claim can expand the tax premium from $4000 to $7000.

Moreover, if employers lose many requests, then they can face a loss of more than thousands of dollars annually.

Initial Claims

As the name suggests, initial claims refer to the applicants who have claimed for their unemployment insurance benefits recently.

Hence, initial claims serve as a measure to determine the unemployment level of the market.

The initial claims in March reached some 6.9 million per week. This is because due to the COVID-19 outbreak when many factories were shut down to avert the total variable expenses.

The last highest number of initial claims was sighted on October 2, 1982. During this time there were 695,000 claims in a single week.

Counting claims refer to the number of people who are collecting these benefits. The number of counting requests reached 32 million at the end of June 27, 2020.

This means that around one in every five workers wants to reap the benefits of unemployment insurance. Such services relate to the expanded compensation of this insurance program.

FUTA and SUTA

FUTA stands for the Federal Unemployment Tax Act. The employers’ fund this tax and the other state taxes for the unemployment insurance program.

These authorities calculate the tax on the first $7000 paid to each employee. The tax rate is 6%. However, they may truncate it down to 0.6%.

This is because of credit of 5.4%, which is proffered to the employers who pay their state unemployment taxes on time. The employer cannot directly change this tax rate.

For example, if an employee earns $7000 or more, then the FUTA tax will be $42.

Sometimes the states have less unemployment insurance trust funds. In such cases, federal money is proffered to these states.

However, if the states are unable to repay the loan amount, the federal government can expand the employers’ tax rates of the respected state.

But, the states need to repay their loan amount to the federal government within two to three years.

The federal government bestows full flexibility to the states in determining the insurance benefits for their workers.

The states can offer protection to their workers with significantly fewer requirements of the federal government.

There are many factors which the states can choose freely. Such factors entail the benefit level, employer tax rates, duration of the benefits, and eligibility requirements.

Hence, the states can modify the extent of duration or the minimum standards of the previous wage. For example, previously, the duration of the benefits was 26 weeks.

However, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many states like North Carolina and Florida truncated this duration to 12 weeks.

SUTA stands for the State Unemployment Tax Act. This tax is more complicated than the FUTA. The tax rate generally ranges between 1% to 8%.

Hence, the employers pay taxes on the earnings of the employees. This amount varies from $10,000 to $15,000 per employee per year.