History

• Federal Unemployment Insurance in the United States did not exist prior to the Great Depression, a period of economic disaster for the country during which more than one-fourth of the nation's adult workforce was unemployed. In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law a bill which included the foundation for a national Unemployment Insurance system which would receive funding from unemployment taxes at both the federal and state levels.
  
  

Federal-State Unemployment Insurance

• Under the current system, workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own may qualify for Federal-State Unemployment Insurance, distributed and managed on the state level. Individual state unemployment agencies determine the initial eligibility of applicants as well as the requirements of their continuing eligibility, which include demonstrable efforts to seek new employment as well as income restrictions. These requirements vary by state.
  
  

Extended Benefits

• During periods of high unemployment the federal and some state governments may enact Extended Unemployment Benefit programs to give workers who have exhausted all of their normally-available benefits access to an additional 13 weeks, under the federal plan, and up to 20 weeks if the state in question has enacted a program of its own. The amount of benefits received under this plan equal the amount of benefits received during normal periods of eligibility.
  
  

Disaster Unemployment Insurance

• According to the U.S. Department of Labor Website, amendments to the 1974 Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance act provide the president with the power to issue benefits to "individuals unemployed as the direct result of a major disaster," but only to individuals not eligible for regular unemployment benefits. If an individual's place of work was destroyed, too damaged to allow work, made unreachable by the disaster or, if the disaster prevents an individual from working because of injuries sustained, that individual would qualify for Disaster Unemployment Insurance.
  
  

Other Unemployment Insurance

• Other forms of special unemployment insurance include Self Employment Assistance for dislocated workers to start their own small businesses, Trade Readjustment Allowances for people who have used all of their regular unemployment benefits and whose jobs were impacted by foreign trade and Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees and Ex-Service members.