Kansas Unemployment Benefits: Who Qualifies, How Much, and How to Apply

If you were discharged or suspended for misconduct, you are disqualified until you are reemployed and have earned at least 3 times your weekly benefit amount. Misconduct means violating a duty owed to the employer, such as a company or safety rule you knew or should have known about, that is lawful, job-related and fairly and consistently enforced. Unreported absences can count, but attendance-based misconduct generally requires a prior warning. You are not disqualified for inefficiency, inability, ordinary negligence or good-faith errors. Gross misconduct (such as theft, fraud, intentional damage or injury, any felony, or alcohol or drug use or impairment at work) disqualifies you until you earn 8 times your weekly benefit amount and cancels that employer's wage credits.

If you quit without good cause, you are disqualified until you are reemployed and have earned at least 3 times your weekly benefit amount. Good cause means a serious reason that would compel a reasonable person to quit, acting in good faith. You are not disqualified for quitting because of illness or injury on a provider's advice (with notice and an offer to return), hazardous working conditions, harassment the employer knew about, being told to break a law, a substantial violation of the work agreement, a military spouse's transfer, domestic violence, a personal emergency after reasonable efforts to keep the job, approved trade-act training, or to take better work.

Workers who lose their job through no fault of their own may qualify. If your hours are reduced, you receive your weekly benefit amount minus any wages for the week above 25% of your weekly benefit amount.

You must have wages in more than one quarter of your base period, and total base period wages of at least 30 times your weekly benefit amount.

Based on the three-month seasonally adjusted Kansas unemployment rate when your benefit year starts: 16 weeks if the rate is below 5%, 20 weeks if it is at least 5% but below 6%, and 26 weeks if it is 6% or higher. Total benefits cannot exceed 26 times your weekly benefit amount or one-third of your base period wages, whichever is less.

Yes. You must serve an unpaid one-week waiting period within the benefit year.

You must register for work with the state employment service and keep reporting as required, and each week you must pursue the full course of action most reasonably calculated to get you reemployed. The required number of weekly work search contacts is set by KDOL rules.

Any separation, termination, severance or similar payment paid to you at or after your separation during the benefit year reduces your weekly benefits. Vacation or holiday pay for a week you claim counts as wages. Pension or retirement payments from a plan funded by a base period employer reduce your weekly benefit (prorated if you also contributed); Social Security and Railroad Retirement are not offset.

You must appeal an examiner's determination within 16 calendar days after it was mailed to your last known address (or delivered, if not mailed); the appeal is heard by a referee. A referee's decision can be appealed to the Employment Security Board of Review within 16 calendar days. Deadlines may be extended for excusable neglect.

Your weekly benefit is reduced by any wages for the week that are more than 25% of your weekly benefit amount, rounded down to the dollar.

Under Kansas law, services performed for wages or under a contract of hire are employment if the business keeps the right to control not only the end result but also the manner and means of doing the work. People who are employees under the usual common-law rules are also covered.