How much does unemployment pay in Alabama?

Your weekly amount is set from wages your employers already reported to the Alabama Department of Workforce, which is the same department that was the Alabama Department of Labor. What actually reaches you in a given week can be lower than that, and both figures are worked out below.

How your weekly amount is worked out

Alabama starts with your base period, which is the first 4 of the last 5 completed calendar quarters before your benefit year begins. It takes the 2 quarters of that period in which your total wages were highest, averages them, and derives your weekly benefit amount from that average.

The result is rounded to a whole dollar, up when the cents come to more than half a dollar and down when they do not. Rounding matters most at either end, where the statute sets hard limits:

• If the figure before rounding is not more than $44.50, there is no weekly benefit amount at all.
• For benefit years beginning on or after January 1, 2020, a figure above $274.50 pays the weekly maximum of $275.

Between those limits, the department publishes the range as a minimum of $45 to a maximum of $275 a week, effective January 1, 2020, calculated from your base period earnings.

The day after you file, the department mails you a monetary determination. It lists your base period wages by employer, the weekly amount you may be entitled to, and the total for the year. That form carries your own figures, so read it before you plan around anything on this page. If something on it looks wrong, call 1-800-361-4524 immediately: a re-determination may be needed to find the missing or incorrect wages. That line books a time rather than answering straight away, so call after 5 p.m., Sunday through Thursday, for a callback the next day.

If you work part time in a week

Report the gross earnings for every week you claim, counted in the week you earn them rather than the week the money arrives.

For a week in which you are totally or partly unemployed, Alabama pays your weekly benefit amount less the part of that week's wages that runs above one third of your weekly benefit amount, and the payment is computed to the nearest dollar. The arithmetic runs off your own weekly benefit amount, the figure on your monetary determination, so the earnings level where a payment starts shrinking is different for every claimant.

A week pays only while your gross earnings for it stay below your weekly benefit amount. Earn more than that in a week and no payment is due for it. Unemployment does not top up wages lost to cut hours or a furlough, so a large drop in hours can still leave you with nothing payable.

If your hours were cut without you asking for the cut, you can be working and still draw for the weeks in which you earn less than your weekly benefit amount. Count each week from Sunday through Saturday when you report. The weekly certification is where those earnings go.

Severance, vacation, holiday, and sick pay

Accrued vacation or sick pay does not affect the benefits of a worker who is permanently separated from the job. A payout for unused sick days at termination is spread across the weeks immediately after you leave, measured against your normal and customary work week, and that treatment applies only where you stay attached to the employer.

Vacation pay counts as wages. It comes off the week it was paid for rather than the week it reaches you, so the department has to work out which period the payment covers. Holiday pay counts as wages too, and belongs to the week the holiday falls in.

Wages in lieu of notice, a dismissal allowance, or a separation allowance affect eligibility only where every one of these holds:

• The payment is made under a legal obligation, arising from a contract or agreement enforceable in an action at law.
• The agreement names the period after termination that the payments apply to.
• The agreement carries language showing some continuation of the employer-employee relationship, such as payments that stop or shrink once you are working again.

Severance paid without regard to your status after you leave does not affect eligibility. Separately, a lump sum of wages in lieu of notice, a dismissal or severance allowance, or a back pay award is prorated over the period it was paid for and counted as though you had been paid it then.

If you draw a pension or Social Security

Social Security never reduces an Alabama unemployment benefit. Beginning with the weeks ending October 7, 1995, a pension, retirement or retired pay, annuity, or other similar periodic payment under the Social Security Act or the Railroad Retirement Act does not reduce benefits, and the department's own rule book says such a payment is neither deductible nor disqualifying. If you are drawing Social Security, file anyway.

The reduction the statute does impose is a narrow one, and it reaches an employer's pension, not Social Security. For weeks beginning on or after April 26, 1982, a week's benefit is reduced, but not below zero, by a pension, retirement or retired pay, annuity, or other payment reasonably attributable to that week. The reduction bites only where that payment comes from a plan maintained or contributed to by a base period employer, and is 100 percent employer-financed with nothing contributed by the worker. The work you did for that employer after your base period began must also have affected your eligibility for the payment or increased it.

Other income that changes a week's payment

Only the kinds of income the law names can affect eligibility at all:

• Wages.
• Wages in lieu of notice, a dismissal or separation allowance.
• Pensions.
• Receiving, or applying for, unemployment compensation from another state.
• Workers' compensation for a temporary disability.
• A training allowance.

Workers' compensation works differently from the rest. For any week in which you have received or are seeking compensation for temporary disability under a workers' compensation law, you are disqualified, unless it is finally determined that you were not entitled to that compensation. Where the workers' compensation comes to less than the benefit otherwise due, you may receive the benefit reduced by that payment if you are otherwise eligible.

How many weeks your money stretches across is a separate question, answered on how long benefits last.