Unemployment Benefit Eligibility

• Benefits are only provided to people who qualify. To qualify, a person must, in most cases, have been fired from his job for reasons unrelated to the quality of the performance of the job. This is so that unemployment benefits will not be provided to workers who are fired because they are negligent or to provide support for people who would hold a job, but choose not to.
  
  

Resignation

• Most people who resign from jobs are not eligible for benefits because they did not have to resign from the job they left. Rather, these people left by choice, meaning that a job was available to them, but they choose to be unemployed. This is not the type of worker than unemployment benefits are designed to support. However, if the employer forced the person out, then he may qualify for benefits.
  
  

Reason for Quitting

• According to the legal reference website FindLaw, there are a number of reasons that a person could be forced to resign and still qualify for benefits. All of them relate to some harm that the employee suffered while he was employed, forcing him to leave. For example, a person may have suffered harassment or discrimination,a significant reduction in hours or pay, been threatened with firing or experienced unsafe working conditions. In addition, battered domestic partners are allowed to resign to flee abuse.
  
  

Considerations

• Unemployment benefits, although part of a federal program, are administered on the state level and states have some latitude in their allotment of benefits. This means that each state has slightly different criteria for who is eligible to receive benefits. To determine whether he is or would be eligible if he resigned, a worker should contact his state department of labor or secretary of state.