Alabama UnemploymentIndependent benefits guide
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Independent guide. Not affiliated with the Alabama Department of Workforce or any government agency.

Where do you look for work in Alabama while you claim?

Short answer

On AlabamaWorks, which carries the Alabama Department of Workforce's own job postings. Filing a claim registers you with the Alabama Career Center System for 90 days.

Search AlabamaWorks job postings

That registration is automatic only for claimants who live in Alabama, and it does not stay on by itself.

AlabamaWorks, the job bank your claim signs you up to

AlabamaWorks carries the Department of Workforce's job postings. You can search them by job title, company, occupation, military code, education level, and occupation group, and you can narrow by a geographic radius and by the lowest salary you are willing to accept. A virtual recruiter can help narrow the results down for you.

An account is also what keeps you registered. The automatic registration runs 90 days, and past that it stays live only if you update the online resume you keep on the job bank or go into an Alabama Career Center.

The same job seeker page fronts the department's work-based learning, veterans' services, apprenticeships, and employee training programs, so it is the way in to those as well as to the postings.

How many employers you have to contact in a week, and what proof the department wants with each weekly certification, is a separate rule: weekly certifications and work search has it.

What an Alabama Career Center offers a job seeker

Alabama's Career Center System pulls intake, assessment, and case management together in one coordinated location for each area, which is what the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act requires. Through that one door you get labor market information, job development, unemployment insurance information, vocational rehabilitation, veterans' programs, and referral to occupational training.

The services aimed straight at a job seeker are resume building, career and job search assistance, and a resource room. The resource room holds computers with internet access, along with copier, fax, and telephone access, academic skills assessments, GED preparation, and community resource information. Computer access there is free, and it is meant for the job seekers who have no internet of their own and are facing openings that only take an application online.

Find an Alabama Career Center opens the state's locator, and Alabama unemployment phone numbers and office locations lists the centers by city.

Training, and help before the benefits run out

If training is what you need, Career Center staff refer you to the program that fits, and the resource area at every center is there for looking at training as well as for job searches.

The department also runs a profiling system. It flags claimants likely to exhaust their regular benefits and to need reemployment services. If you are flagged, you are referred to services such as job search assistance, and you have to take part, unless the department decides you already completed those services or had justifiable cause not to.

Training can also buy time. Being enrolled and making satisfactory progress in a job training or certification program the Department of Workforce approves, for a high-wage, high-demand occupation, adds weeks of benefits after the regular ones are gone. How long Alabama benefits last has the rule and the number of weeks.

Questions about Trade Readjustment Allowance or Trade Adjustment Assistance training go to 334-956-7308.

The Incumbent Worker Training Program points the other way, at employers: it helps an Alabama employer cover the cost of current staff upgrading and adding skills, which is meant to help a company avoid layoffs and stay open.

Veterans and eligible spouses

Veterans and eligible spouses receive priority of service at all Alabama Career Centers, as federal regulations require. Workforce Alabama also helps place veterans in paid apprenticeships and On-the-Job Training. Workforce Alabama's veterans page sets out the rest of what it does.

More places to look for Alabama openings

These job boards list openings in Alabama.

More Alabama guides

Official sources

Updated and checked against workforce.alabama.gov on