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

If you are discharged for willful misconduct connected with your work, you are not eligible for benefits. The employer has to prove it. Willful misconduct means wanton or willful disregard of the employer's interests, deliberately breaking rules, disregarding the standards of behavior an employer can rightfully expect, or negligence that shows culpability, wrongful intent or intentional disregard of the employer's interests or your duties.

If you quit without a cause of a "necessitous and compelling nature," you are ineligible. You have to prove the reason was real and substantial, left you no other choice, and that you made a reasonable effort to keep the job before quitting. Quitting to go to school generally does not count, except for approved Trade Act (TRA) training.

Workers who lose their job through no fault of their own, for example in a layoff, can apply if they meet the wage and credit-week requirements and are able and available for work. If you are working part-time with reduced hours, you may receive a partial benefit (see the partial benefit credit).

The base year is usually the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters before you apply. Your eligibility depends on your highest-quarter wages, total base-year wages and credit weeks. A credit week is any week in which you earned $116 or more. You need at least 18 credit weeks. Your total base-year wages must also meet the qualifying-wage amount in the UC Law's benefit table for your highest-quarter wages. If you could not meet these requirements because of a work-related injury, you can ask for an alternate base year.

Your weekly benefit rate comes from the benefit table in the UC Law and is based on your highest-quarter wages. The lowest rate on the table is $68, for highest-quarter wages of $1,688 to $1,712. You may also get a dependent allowance. The maximum weekly benefit cannot rise by more than 4% a year, and it can be frozen if the UC trust fund misses solvency targets.

With at least 18 credit weeks, your maximum benefit amount depends on how many credit weeks you have, multiplied by your weekly rate. It is capped at 26 times your weekly benefit rate.

Yes. The first week of your claim is an unpaid waiting week, but you must still file a payment request for it.

Register for reemployment services with PA CareerLink within 30 days of filing. Starting with the third calendar week after you file your initial claim, you must make two job applications and do one work search activity every week. Interviewing for a job counts toward any of the three. In a week when you work part-time and earn more than your partial benefit credit, one application is enough. You must document all work search activity. You are exempt if you are in an approved work search program or training, get work through a union hiring hall, are in the Shared-Work program, are required to attend RESEA, or have a written recall date from your employer.

Severance pay above 40% of Pennsylvania's average annual wage is deducted. It is spread over the weeks right after you separate and reduces your weekly benefit, but never below zero. A pension is deducted if a base-year employer maintained or contributed to the plan and your base-year work affected your eligibility for it or its amount. The deduction is 50% of the weekly prorated pension if you contributed to the plan, and 100% if the employer paid for all of it. Social Security is not deducted. Holiday and vacation pay above your partial benefit credit is deducted in the week the holiday or vacation falls, but vacation pay is not deducted if you have no recall date.

File online any time at benefits.uc.pa.gov, or by phone at 1-888-313-7284 (Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.). You may need to verify your identity. After you apply, file a weekly claim certification for each week you are totally or partially unemployed, and report all gross earnings for the Sunday-to-Saturday week. Keep filing even if a decision on your claim is still pending.

You must appeal within 21 days from the date the determination was mailed. File the appeal online, by mail to the UC Mail Processing Unit - Claimant Appeals in Harrisburg, or by fax to 855-728-2329. A referee holds a hearing. Keep filing for benefits while your appeal is pending.

Your partial benefit credit is 30% of your weekly benefit rate. The state adds your weekly rate and partial benefit credit together, subtracts your gross earnings for the week, and pays the difference, up to your full weekly rate.

Self-employment does not count as base-year employment for financial eligibility, and independent contractors are considered self-employed. A worker is self-employed only if free from control or direction over the work, both under the contract and in fact, and customarily engaged in an independently established trade or business. If you say you were an employee but the employer says you were self-employed, the employer must prove both factors. You are ineligible for any week you are engaged in self-employment; starting a new business begins with the first positive step, such as advertising or renting an office. An exception applies to a sideline business that meets a four-part test (the claimant must prove it). If you are found ineligible due to self-employment, you may qualify again later after working and earning at least six times your weekly benefit rate.

Pennsylvania's Department of Labor & Industry runs the Unemployment Compensation (UC) Benefits system, where you log in with your UC System username and password to certify each week (Sunday through Saturday) that you were totally or partially unemployed. Online filing is available 6 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday and 6 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday. You can also file weekly certifications by phone through PA Teleclaims (PAT) at 888-255-4728, 24 hours a day; the statewide UC line for initial claims is 1-888-313-7284. L&I warns that it will never ask you to pay for UC services.