How earning money affects unemployment compensation
Monday, December 28th, 2009In times of economic recession many individuals laid off for no fault of their own resort to odd jobs like landscaping and cleaning houses to make ends meet and to supplement unemployment insurance that in every case is only a small fraction of the paycheck they were accustomed to bringing home.
Industrious individuals that are ready, willing, and able to do whatever is necessary to provide for their families are often times unjustly penalized for doing everything in their power to put food on the table by scraping together a few extra dollars wherever they can. In an effort to curtail abuse of the unemployment insurance fund almost every state mandates that anyone filing unemployment report any income earned during the period that unemployment is being collected.
At first glance policies requiring people collecting unemployment to report other income may seem like a perfectly logical way to insulate state unemployment departments from unlawful abuse of the system. Sadly, due to the multitude of grey areas with regards to what constitutes employment many families are far worse off trying to earn a very modest living on their own as opposed to quietly collecting unemployment funds for as long as necessary until a position offering similar compensation to their previous full time job comes along.
Unemployment insurance rules vary widely from state to state with regards to everything from the amount of compensation ($900 per week in Massachusetts and only $230 per week in Mississippi) to guidelines for filing and continuing to collect funds. Among the many confusing grey areas are: what constitutes full time work, freelance work, part time work, seasonal work, etc. For example, a laid off worker who accepts a job offer for contract work that only lasts a couple of weeks very much puts him or herself at risk of losing future unemployment compensation once the very short term job is complete. In this common scenario the individual faced with the decision of accepting or declining short term work may likely find themselves very soon in the position of not having a job and this time there may not be any unemployment benefits to fall back on. In times of extreme economic hardship an experienced worker can be forced to resort to considering an adult internship when the only other alternative is no productive work at all.
Staff members of state unemployment departments are largely very reasonable and compassionate people. Unfortunately, much of the filing of unemployment claims is automated in such a way that computer systems and bureaucracies can easily cause disruptions where normal human logic would otherwise prevail. Individuals claiming unemployment dollars should make an appointment to sit down and speak face to face with an unemployment representative and go over the multitude of part time work scenarios in order to better understand how those jobs would impact both their immediate and continued ability to collect unemployment funds.