How Will I Know If I Can Refile My Unemployment?

Exhaustion of Benefits

Exhausting your maximum benefits for the year makes you ineligible to collect unemployment until the benefit year is over. Your maximum benefit amount depends on the way your state calculates it. Some states offer a maximum benefit amount based on a percentage of your previous wages. Others offer you a number of weeks based on your previous wages and you stop collecting benefits after that time. Check with your state's labor office for information on it calculates maximum benefit amounts.

Maximum benefit amounts don't apply to the calendar year. Instead, these amounts are set per benefit year. In reference to the unemployment, a benefit year is the 52 weeks that follow your initial claim filing or the date you first applied for this round of unemployment benefits. Your benefit year dates are on your original notice of determination sent by the state when you're approved for benefits. You can also contact the state labor office by phone or log into your account on the website to find out your benefit year information.

When your unemployment benefits max out, you'll receive a notice from the state to that effect. Regardless of whether you find a new job, you're not eligible to collect benefits again until your benefit year is over. Most states allow you to refile your claim on the day after your benefit year anniversary. Remember that the state isn't going to notify you that it's time to refile if you're still unemployed. You have to remember yourself and initiate the refiling. You either call into the claim line or log into the website to start a new claim.

When you refile your unemployment claim, you're subject to the same eligibility requirements as with a new claim. The labor office reviews and verifies your information for eligibility and accuracy. The most common problem refiling claimants have is the monetary eligibility requirement. Your state has a set amount of money you must have earned from covered employment during the first four of the last five full calendar quarters before your filing date. If you're refiling, your previous income was probably from unemployment payments, which don't count.