Florida jobless benefits grant temporary compensation to those workers meeting the eligibility necessities of Florida law. The Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation and each other state’s unemployment office manages its own unemployment insurance program within Federal guidelines.
After you apply for Florida unemployment benefits from Florida’s Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI), you get a determination notice by mail. This notice clarifies whether you are suitable for unemployment and the sum you can receive. People’s eligible amount can vary based on their base period’s wages. There is also a state maximum law that limits the amount.
If you lately lost your job in Florida, you can compute how much you stand to obtain in jobless benefits before you complete an unemployment application. Florida’s Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI) decides unemployment benefits, which are dependent on your wages grossed during a base year period.
Understanding Base Period
Florida employs the wages you earned during your base period to decide how much you can obtain as unemployment benefit compensation. Your base period is the first four of the past five calendar quarters before the filing of an unemployment claim.
Calendar quarters are January 1 to March 31 and April 1 to June 30 as well as July 1 to September 30 and October 1 to December 31. The calendar quarters should be complete. So in case you applied on March 16, 2011, your last full calendar quarters was October 1 to December 31, 2010, making your base period starting October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010.
Computing a projection for your unemployment benefits gives an approximate figure and your actual unemployment benefit amount could increase or reduce due to factors such as part-time work or dependents.
Calculating Payments
The value of jobless benefits in Florida varies from that of other states as each state unemployment offices applies its own formula and limits when computing the level of unemployment benefits.
The period of unemployment compensation in Florida may also be different from that of other states.
Florida employs High Quarter Method to determine the weekly benefit amount by using the base period quarter in which wages were highest.
The Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI) considers the wages you earned as an employee all through your base period. It finds out in which calendar quarter you earned the most wages divides that quarter’s total wages by 26. The product is your weekly benefit amount. It then sums your whole base period wages and divides that by four. The outcome is your maximum benefit amount per each benefit year, which is the 52 weeks following your original claim date. After that the AWI divides the most you can obtain each benefit year by the amount you will obtain each week, and the end result is the number of weeks you can receive unemployment.
For instance, you get $36,000 during your benefit year and $9,000 during your maximum earning quarter. With these numbers, your weekly payment would be $346 for 26 weeks.
Formula for calculating weekly benefit amount:
HQ (High Quarter Method): highest quarterly wages during base period divided by 26
HQ
1/26
Qualifying Wages or Employment
All states need a worker to have earned a definite amount of wages or to have worked for a definite period of time (or both) within the base period to be financially eligible to collect any UI benefits. Most workers are entitled for benefits based on employment and wages in a single state. On the other hand, some workers who work in more than one state will not have sufficient employment and wages in any single state to set up monetary eligibility, or would be qualified for a smaller weekly benefit amount (WBA). Workers with wages and employment in more than one state can opt to file a claim combining wages and employment earned in all states where they worked into a claim filed under the law of any of the states they worked.
Eligibility for Florida Unemployment Benefits
In order to set an unemployment insurance benefit claim, you must have worked and earned wages during the 1st four quarters of the previous 5 quarters before filing your claim. That time is called your base period. You may be qualified for unemployment compensation even if you had a part-time job. If fully unemployed, the unemployment must have taken place through no mistake of your own. To be eligible for any week of unemployment compensation, you must be prepared and willing to work. You must also actively be seeking employment.
To make sure you qualify for benefits, check out FL unemployment eligibility section.
The qualifying formula for wages and employment used by Florida is:
1½ x HQW in BP; minimum of $3,400 in BP; wages in 2 quarters
The minimum wages needed to qualify for UI in Florida is $2,267 for high quarter and $3,400 for base period.
Maximum Benefit Amount
The sum of jobless benefits you are entitled to is just one side of the story. Florida law also restricts the amount based on the average salary of the state’s workers. This avoids abuse of the system and guarantees that the pool from which benefits are drawn is not worn out by a few claimants who have earned high salaries throughout their base periods.
The maximums can vary per year but since January 2011, you cannot receive more than $275 per week for a maximum sum of 26 weeks. Even if you officially qualify for more payment, you will never in fact collect more.
As of December, 2008, FL benefits ranged from $32 to $275. Florida state unemployment benefits are put through Federal income taxes, and you may choose to have taxes withheld from your unemployment check.
Across the United States, it usually takes 2 to 3 weeks to collect your first benefit check after you file your claim. Check with your state unemployment office for details.
Since December 2008, the duration of FL unemployment benefits was 9-26 weeks, but benefits can be extended by Florida during times of high unemployment or other special conditions.
Emergency Unemployment Benefits
One exception to the Florida maximum unemployment laws is the adding of emergency unemployment (EU) benefits. When the country goes through high levels of unemployment, Congress can pass three federal extensions. Each state receives money to pull out benefits to its citizens based on the rules based on the guidelines set by Congress. Though you obtain your emergency extension payments from the AWI, these are not Florida unemployment benefits.
In reality, you cannot obtain emergency unemployment until you have by now used up your Florida benefits. For information on current emergency unemployment benefits, make contact with the AWI.