How do you file a weekly unemployment claim in Utah?

Applying for benefits does not pay you. Each week is claimed on its own, and a week you never claim stays unpaid even when the rest of the claim is in good order.

How to file each week

The claim week opens Sunday at 12:00 a.m. and ends Saturday at 11:59 p.m. Workforce Services asks you to file on the Sunday after that week ends, or as soon as you can after it.

Filing is online at jobs.utah.gov. Sign in, open your "my Unemployment" account, and choose File Weekly Claim. You need your Social Security number and your PIN for it. That PIN is your signature on the claim: keep it to yourself, and if anyone else learns it, change it right away at jobs.utah.gov or by calling the CARE Team, because you are liable for anything filed with it. Only you can file your own weekly claim. Nobody else may do it for you, not even your spouse, and you are responsible for anything filed in your name.

If 27 days pass from the Saturday that ended the last week you filed, the claim is late and closes, and you have to reopen it at jobs.utah.gov before you can file for another week.

If you cannot file online

Utah's own publications disagree here, and the honest answer is to use whichever route you can reach. The claimant guide says claims are not taken over the phone, and sends anyone having difficulty to the Live Chat feature inside their account. The Department's unemployment home page says the only ways to apply, enter direct deposit details, or change anything are the state website or a call to the Claims Assistance and Re-Employment Team on 801-526-4400. Its guide for laid-off workers says plainly that a claimant who cannot use the internet can file by phone, and lists the numbers by region: 801-526-4400 for Salt Lake and South Davis, 801-612-0877 for Weber and North Davis, 801-375-4067 for Provo, and 888-848-0688 for the balance of the state or a caller from out of state. File online if you can. If you cannot, call, and expect that the person who answers may still point you back at the website.

The same layoff guide sends a job seeker with no internet access to any of the 30 employment centers, on 801-526-0950 or 866-435-7414, and the Notice to Workers poster every Utah employer has to display says the Job Connection Rooms there provide internet access along with Information Specialists, and fax and copy machines. Staff at a center will not discuss your claim, which the claimant guide states outright, so the center is a place to do the filing and not a place to ask about it. The offices and phone numbers page has the addresses and the hours.

What the weekly claim asks

Each weekly claim is a set of questions about that one week, running Sunday at 12:00 a.m. through Saturday at 11:59 p.m., and your answers decide what the week pays. Any type of work in that week means answering yes to the claim's first question. Report:

• Any earnings for work done that week.
• Those earnings in the gross amount, before tax or any other deduction comes out of them.
• Those earnings against the week you actually did the work, and not the week you were paid for it.
• Those earnings even when the money is not in your hands yet, so do not hold a week's work back until the payment arrives. Enter the figure without cents: the Department's own example rounds $116.80 down to 116.
• Work counts broadly, not just a regular job: full-time, part-time, or temporary work, paid training, military reserve or National Guard duty, work for a non-profit or a church, paid childcare even in your own home, tips, farm income, and volunteer work, plus the cash value of work done in exchange for anything of value. The Department's own example: 10 hours at $9.00 an hour is $90.00 to report.
• Any self-employment or commission sales activity, which can get benefits denied even in a week it earned you nothing.
• Vacation, holiday, severance, or paid time off you have had or are going to have. That goes to the CARE Team, and no week is payable when it equals or exceeds your weekly benefit amount.
• Travel outside the United States, which may leave you ineligible for that week.
• Anything that stopped you working, accepting work, or seeking full-time work, including illness, injury, hospitalization, travel, incarceration, school attendance, a lost childcare place, or a lost ride. You may be asked for evidence of your ability to work, such as a doctor's statement.
• The employer contacts you made, which is the work search record below.

Your answers come back for you to review before you certify the claim. Misreporting earnings, knowingly or carelessly, is fraud, and if you spot a mistake after filing, go to Live Chat or call the CARE Team immediately. The same applies if more money arrives later than you actually reported for a week: go back and correct it, because failing to report work and earnings correctly, in either direction, risks an overpayment and a penalty.

Claims are picked at random for an audit every week. Auditors verify anything bearing on eligibility, including work search, base-period wages, job separations, school attendance, and the work and earnings reported for any week filed, and benefits can be denied for not taking part. You may also be sent an online eligibility review, which asks the basic eligibility questions and requires your work search contacts with it. Benefits can be denied if you do not complete the review, do not submit the list of employer contacts, list contacts that cannot be verified, or, having been notified, fail to schedule and attend a Re-Employment Services and Eligibility Assessment appointment. To move an appointment you already have, call 801-526-4301.

The waiting week

Utah law does not pay the first eligible week of a claim. That week is the waiting week, and you still have to file for it and meet every eligibility rule in it, because the credit for that week is what establishes the claim. The statute makes it a waiting period of one week in each benefit year.

The wait attaches to the first week you are actually eligible. Waiting-week credit is what makes a week count as your waiting week, and a week earns it only if you were otherwise eligible in it. A week that pays nothing because your earnings matched or beat your weekly benefit amount, or because you worked 40 hours or more, earns no waiting-week credit either.

Approved training sets that aside. A claimant the division has approved for training is not made ineligible for a week of that training by being unavailable for work, by not searching for work, by refusing or not applying for suitable work, or by not having served the waiting week, and the division has to approve mandatory apprenticeship-related training.

Work search and the record you keep

Utah states the work search rule twice inside one document, and the wording is not the same both times. The claimant guide's own prose says you should make at least 4 new full-time job contacts each week. The weekly certification reproduced inside that same guide states it as a requirement, in the words "You are required to" make 4 new full-time employer contacts each week, and adds that you will be required to provide that employer information. The certification is the part you answer and submit every week, so 4 is the number to meet.

A new contact means an employer you have not contacted before, or an employer you have contacted before about a job they have only just listed. All 4 contacts have to be made inside the Sunday-through-Saturday week you are claiming, or they do not count towards eligibility.

Keep a detailed record of them. Workforce Services wants the date of contact, the company name or other identifying information such as a job reference number, the company's address, phone number, email, or web link, the position title, the method of contact, and the result. Benefits can be denied for listing contacts that cannot be verified, so the reference number and the web link are worth writing down while you still have the page open.

The rule underneath all of this is the eligibility test: benefits go to workers who are able to work full-time and are available for and actively seeking full-time work, and you have to be able to work and available for work in each and every week you claim.

Working a week you claim

You can carry on filing in a week you worked part-time and earned less than your weekly benefit amount. Workforce Services applies a 30 percent earnings allowance when it works out that week's payment, so earnings up to 30 percent of your weekly benefit amount do not change what the week pays, and you report them anyway. The benefit amounts page works the arithmetic through with the Department's own example.

The payment stops outright in a week where your earnings equal or exceed your weekly benefit amount, or where you work 40 hours or more, and either one costs you the waiting-week credit for that week as well. Report earnings at or above your weekly benefit amount for 4 weeks running and Workforce Services closes the claim.

Self-employment and commission sales go on the weekly filing itself, and being involved in either can get a claim denied whether or not any money came in. If something about a week is not straightforward, Live Chat inside your "my Unemployment" account and the CARE Team are the places that can look at it.

When the money arrives

Meet every eligibility rule and file every week, and the first payment normally arrives about 3 weeks after you apply. Payments are not made on the same day each week. The Notice of Monetary Determination normally reaches you within 3 weeks of filing the claim as well, carrying the wages your base-period employers reported, your weekly benefit amount, and the number of weeks you may be paid.

Every payment is electronic. You can choose direct deposit into your own checking or savings account, and if you do not choose it, Workforce Services issues a U.S. Bank ReliaCard prepaid debit card instead. Either way, the money is not available in the account or on the card until at least 2 business days after Workforce Services releases it.

Going back to work

Workforce Services closes a claim automatically in either of these cases: you stop filing and 27 days pass from the Saturday of the last week you claimed, or you report earnings at or above your weekly benefit amount for 4 consecutive weeks.

If the work does not last, reopen the closed claim at jobs.utah.gov rather than starting again. Reopening sets a new effective date, the Sunday of the week you actually complete the reopening, and a late reopening cannot reach back to cover the weeks already gone by. A Utah claim is established for a 52-week benefit year, and you may not file a new claim until that year has ended, whether or not the benefits on it were all paid. How long a Utah claim lasts covers what happens as the year runs out.