NY tends to have bureaucracy delays in anything that involves receiving benefit paperwork using the same basic excuse of needing the paperwork to be reviewed/resubmitted because of a wording error. May I suggest you take advantage of your local elected representatives to aid in the process of getting the paperwork through the system. There’s happens to be a lot of employers in NYS who despite the regulation to have unemployment insurance coverage but don’t as a savings method because wages are higher. That makes most applications for unemployment get denied because they expect the former employee not to appeal the process, so getting your local government representative to help forces the application to get reviewed and corrected and eliminate any paperwork delays. There is still some delay because of the high volume of applications for unemployment in NYS but with a little help it can be done in about 3 weeks to get the application approved and the first check after a month even if the employer denies the claim at first. The only other thing to realize about unemployment claims in NYS, is to have made sure you were getting paid all your wages on record with payroll taxes being paid to federal, state, local and FICA taxes. Don’t assume your tip earnings were recorded if you didn’t list the full amount to keep paychecks having minimum payroll taxes taken out of them. NYS despite having a very liberal benefit program is also very conservative in granting benefits if you earned unreported income. I never earned off books earnings but those individuals who did never qualified for unemployment benefits but did qualify for other benefits like SNAP and Medicaid. Unfortunately, unreported earned income does effect the expected amount of your future Social Security benefits if you limit the income reported to the bare minimum amount to earn the credits ( it’s currently $1500/year) and that will be what you will get when you apply for that benefit based on the average maximum income reported.
NYS unemployment benefit is also based on the average maximum earnings and available 26 weeks in the predetermined amount of $504/ weekly pretax based on your actual recorded earnings ( highly suggest you have taxes taken out of your unemployment check because you do owe taxes on it) during which one is expected to show intent of looking for employment opportunities—classes and job applications . No unemployment benefits equal your employment income status, so don’t expect to get a 6-figure unemployment check.
So if you were getting paid via recurring recorded income, you should expect your application to be approved within 21-28 days even with an initial rejection by the employer—the Department of Labor in NYS keeps records of all employers who reject unemployment claims and overrides the rejection if the employee re-appeals. All of this is available via the NYS government website.
Share your insight
Join an authentic community that helps women support each other at work. Share your professional experience or ask for advice — you can even post anonymously.
23 Comments
Join the conversation