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Labor and Economic Opportunity

Eligibility Requirements

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  • Eligibility Requirements

Eligibility Requirements

  • To be eligible, for unemployment benefits, you must be unemployed and able, available for, and actively seeking suitable full-time work. Unless instructed otherwise by UIA staff, you must also register for work at www.mitalent.org and visit a Michigan Works! Agency (MWA) service center.  

Wage Requirements

Wage Requirements

  • Qualifying requirements – To determine if you have enough wages to qualify for benefits, UIA first looks at what is called your Standard Base Period. The standard base period includes the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters prior to when you filed your claim.  The four calendar quarters in a year are: January – March; April – June; July – September; and October – December.

    • You must have at least one quarter in which you earned a minimum of $3,744.00.
    • You must have wages in at least two calendar quarters in the base period.
    • Your total base period wages must equal 1.5 times your highest quarter wages.

    If you do not meet the wage requirements based on your standard base period, the UIA will consider your wages in the “alternate” base period, which is the four most recently completed calendar quarters.

    If you don’t meet the wage requirement in either the Standard Base period or the Alternate Base period, you may still be able to qualify for benefits using the Alternate Earnings Qualifier (AEQ).  This means:

    • You must have wages in at least two quarters;
    • total wages for all four quarters must equal at least 20 times the state average weekly wage (SAWW). For 2020, the AEQ amount is $20,742 [20 x $1,037.10 (SAWW) = $20,742].

Weekly Benefit Amount

Weekly Benefit Amount

  • Your Weekly Benefit Amount (WBA) is determined by your quarterly wages. The amount you receive in unemployment benefits is calculated by multiplying the highest amount of wages paid to you in any base period quarter by 4.1 percent. The maximum benefit payment you can receive is $362. See your Monetary Determination for calculations using your information.

Number of Qualifying Weeks

Number of Qualifying Weeks

  • Your number of weeks allowed is determined by multiplying your total base period wages by 43 percent, dividing by your WBA and rounding down to the nearest half week. The maximum number of benefits is 20 and the minimum number of weeks is 14. See your Monetary Determination, for calculations using your information.