How much does unemployment pay in Utah?

Your amount is worked out from wages your employers had already reported, and it reaches you on a Notice of Monetary Determination within 3 weeks of filing. Nothing is added for a spouse or children.

How Utah works out your weekly amount

The Department's benefit schedule answers this in a table for most claims and a formula for the rest. Its table runs from a weekly amount of $574.00 up to the $806 maximum, and you read your amount off the row your high quarter falls in. For weekly amounts less than $574.00 the schedule prints no rows, and gives the rule in a line instead: divide the high quarter by 26 and subtract $5.00.

Your high quarter is the calendar quarter of your base period in which you were paid the most. The base period is the 12-month stretch made up of the first 4 of the last 5 completed calendar quarters before the week you file.

Cents are dropped, so the figure on your determination is a whole number of dollars.

The table and the formula meet at the table's lowest row, and they agree there. That row pairs a high quarter of 15054.00 to 15079.99 with a weekly amount of 574, and the formula run on the bottom of that bracket gives the same figure: $15,054 divided by 26 is $579, and $5.00 off that is $574. From $574.00 up, the row is what decides your amount and not the formula.

No claim pays more than $806 a week. The ceiling is statutory, set at 62.5% of the insured average fiscal year weekly wage minus $5. That wage is the insured average fiscal year wage divided by 52, and Utah recalculates it on or before November 15 each year, which is why these figures carry a date: they come from the schedule effective January 1 to December 31, 2026, and the next schedule replaces them.

There is no floor on the other end. The statute that sets this formula caps the weekly amount but names no minimum at all, so do not read one in from the $5,500 base-period figure: that number decides whether you qualify, not the smallest amount a qualifying claim can pay.

The same schedule sets the wage test for qualifying at all: at least $5,500 in base period wages, with total base period wages of at least 1.5 times your high quarter. Who qualifies in Utah covers that test. How long benefits last has the number of weeks your amount is paid for, and the limit on what one claim can pay in total.

Working part time while you claim

You can work part time and keep filing. Utah lets you claim any week in which your part-time earnings came to less than your weekly benefit amount, and an earnings allowance decides how much of that week's benefit is still paid.

The allowance is 30% of your weekly benefit amount. That 30% is measured against your benefit, not against your old pay or your old hours. Earn less than the allowance in a week and the payment for that week is not reduced at all. The Department's own example: if your weekly amount is normally $300.00, you could earn $90.00, which is 30% of $300.00, without affecting the payment for that week.

Above the allowance, the arithmetic for a week runs like this:

1. Work out 30% of your weekly benefit amount. That is the allowance.
2. Subtract the allowance from your earnings for that week.
3. Take what is left off your weekly benefit amount. What remains is the payment.

Every dollar over the allowance costs you a dollar of benefit, so the payment tapers as the work grows instead of stopping at a cliff.

If your earnings for a week equal or exceed your weekly benefit amount, or if you work 40 or more hours, no payment is made for that week.

Hours decide the outcome at that 40-hour line. Below it, the money is what counts: the reduction is worked out from what you were paid for the week, not from how long you were there. So if you are trying to work out how many hours you can take, work out the earnings instead. A few hours that earn more can cost you more of a payment than a longer stretch that earns less.

Report the earnings either way, including in a week the allowance covers them completely. The same rule applies here as on the weekly claim itself: what you enter is the gross figure for the week the work happened, not the week the paycheck lands, and not reduced for tax or anything else withheld from it. Drop the cents when you enter it, the same way the Department's own example turns $116.80 into 116. Reporting the smaller after-tax number, or holding off until the money actually arrives, both turn into an overpayment you have to pay back later. Self-employment and commission sales go on the weekly claim too, and taking part in either can end a claim even in a week when nothing was earned or paid.

Earnings at or above your weekly amount for 4 weeks in a row close the claim. How long benefits last has what happens after that.

Severance, vacation, holiday, and paid time off

Vacation, holiday, severance, paid or personal time off, and separation pay all have to be reported to the CARE Team, including pay you have not received yet but will. Utah usually counts these payments as earnings.

What that pay does to a week depends on how it compares with your weekly benefit amount. Where it comes to less than the benefits otherwise due for that week, the week is still payable if you are otherwise eligible, reduced rather than withheld altogether, so file it and report the payment. The statute cuts that week the same way it cuts a week with part-time earnings in it, by the part of the payment above 30% of your weekly benefit amount, so the allowance described above applies to this pay too. Where it equals or exceeds your weekly benefit amount, you get neither benefits nor waiting week credit.

What else comes off a weekly payment

Only a pension, retirement, or disability payment from a plan that one of your base period employers maintained or paid into is deducted from your weekly benefit amount. Where it does apply, the deduction is 100% of the retirement money attributable to the week, and it applies whether you are drawing that money or are only eligible to draw it. Report any retirement or disability retirement income the moment you apply for it or start receiving it, through Live Chat or the CARE Team, and the Department sends a notice back if it is going to be deducted. If retroactive retirement pay later arrives covering weeks you also drew unemployment benefits for, you are responsible for repaying those weeks as an overpayment.

Social Security is not deducted. For anyone whose benefit year starts now, Utah's statute takes Social Security out of that offset altogether: for this rule, Social Security benefits are not treated as retirement benefits.

Child support comes off where a court order, or an agreement you signed, requires payment to the Utah State Office of Recovery Services: up to 50% of the weekly amount. That office, not Workforce Services, controls how much is withheld.

Income tax comes out only if you ask for it, and taxes on Utah unemployment covers how to set it up.

Checking the amount on your determination

The Notice of Monetary Determination normally reaches you within 3 weeks of filing. It shows the wages your base period employers reported, your weekly benefit amount, and the number of weeks your claim can pay. Read those wage figures against your own pay records before you rely on the amount.

If you disagree with a decision on your claim you can appeal, and a hearing is then set with an Administrative Law Judge. Denials, appeals, and overpayments has the deadline and how to file.