How much is your weekly benefit amount in Minnesota?

Your weekly benefit amount is worked out when your benefit account is established, and DEED puts it in writing before any payment reaches you. The figure then holds steady while the deductions move, and an employer payment counted against a week can take that week's benefits entirely.

How your wage credits set your weekly benefit amount

Your amount rests on gross wages paid by all of your employers during a recent 52-week base period. Commissions, bonuses, overtime, vacation pay, severance pay depending on its timing, and wages earned in other states are counted; earnings from self-employment usually are not.

By statute, the weekly benefit amount is the higher of these:

1. 50 percent of your average weekly wage across the base period, to a maximum of 66-2/3 percent of the state's average weekly wage.
2. 50 percent of your average weekly wage in your high quarter, to a maximum of 43 percent of the state's average weekly wage.

The base period figure divides your total wage credits by 52. The high quarter figure divides your high quarter wage credits by 13. Nothing in the formula adjusts for how many dependents you have.

There is a threshold underneath all of it. By statute you need wage credits of at least 5.3 percent of the state's average annual wage, rounded down to the next lower $100, for a benefit account to exist at all. That rounding decides whether you qualify at all; it does not change what a qualifying week pays.

The $948 maximum, and the Sunday it moves

DEED's own handbook puts the weekly benefit amount at about 50 percent of your average weekly wage, up to a state maximum of $948. That handbook is effective October 26, 2025 through October 24, 2026, so $948 belongs to that window rather than to Minnesota law permanently.

The maximum is not set by hand. By statute DEED calculates the state's average annual wage and the state's average weekly wage on or before June 30 each year, from the wage detail reports employers file. The average weekly wage then sets the maximum weekly benefit for the one-year period beginning the last Sunday in October of the year it was calculated.

A new maximum applies to benefit accounts established on or after that last Sunday in October. Once your account is established, the October change does not move your weekly amount in either direction. Both the ceiling and the average wage figure it rests on are set by statute rather than by DEED's own policy.

Working part time while you claim

Part-time work does not close an unemployment claim. It changes what a week pays, and past a point it makes the week unpayable.

Where your earnings for a week are less than your weekly benefit amount, 50 percent of those earnings are deducted from the unemployment payment for that week. Where your earnings for the week, holiday pay included, equal or exceed your weekly benefit amount, you are not eligible for unemployment benefits for that week at all.

DEED states the same test with hours attached: you are not eligible for any week you work 32 or more hours, and a partial payment may be made for a week you work fewer than 32 hours and earn less than your weekly benefit amount.

Some pay escapes the deduction. By statute, no deduction is made from an unemployment weekly benefit amount for National Guard or military reserve pay, for direct service as a volunteer firefighter or volunteer ambulance service personnel, for jury duty pay, or for pay as an election judge. The volunteer exception stops short of on-call or standby pay.

Where your hours move around, DEED tells you to request benefits every week and report the gross earnings and hours you worked, and its system works out whether a payment is due and how much. Weekly claims and work search covers what counts as work to report.

Severance, vacation, holiday, and sick pay

An employer payment made around a separation can make a whole week of unemployment benefits unpayable, so its timing matters as much as its size.

By statute, where vacation pay, sick pay, or paid time off pay for a week equals or exceeds your weekly benefit amount, you are not eligible for that week; where it is less, the week is still paid and your benefits are reduced by the amount of the payment. That rule does not apply on a permanent separation from employment, or to payments from a vacation fund run by a union or by a third party the employer does not control. Minnesota's Paid Leave benefit treats the same kinds of pay under its own separate rules, which Paid Leave and unemployment are not the same claim sets out.

Severance sits under its own rule, and it is graded the same way. By statute, where separation pay, severance pay, bonus pay, or any other payment an employer makes because of or after a separation reaches your weekly benefit amount, you are not eligible for that week; where the amount attributed to the week is less than that, the week is still paid and your benefits are reduced by the amount of the payment. Either way the rule reaches the payment only where it counts as wages under the statute's own definition, or is subject to FICA tax.

Holiday pay works differently again. The statute counts it as earnings for the week, so it goes into the same test as wages from a part-time job.

Other income can shrink an unemployment week's payment, or end it outright:

A lump sum pension, retirement, or annuity payment does not count as a payment received if you immediately deposit it in a qualified pension plan or account, or if it was an early distribution on which you paid the early distribution penalty under the Internal Revenue Code. The workers' compensation rule above does not apply while a wage-loss claim is still pending, though DEED still has to decide your availability for suitable employment before paying you, and if that claim is later paid, the unemployment benefits you already received for those weeks become an overpayment you have to repay.

The Social Security disability exceptions are narrow. Either the Social Security Administration approved collecting primary disability benefits each month you were employed during the base period, or a health care professional who is aware of the claim certifies that you are available for suitable employment. Where one of them applies, no deduction is made from your unemployment weekly benefit amount for the disability payment.

DEED asks about all of this when you apply and again at every payment request. Its own list runs severance, notice pay or retention pay and other separation payments, sick pay and holiday pay, vacation pay, pension or 401K payments, and workers' compensation or other employer-contributed wage-loss insurance, whatever your former employer called the payment. Where income affects your payments, DEED mails a determination explaining the effect.

What your determination shows

DEED mails a Determination of Benefit Account giving your weekly benefit amount and the total amount of benefits available on the account. The determination does not by itself mean benefits will be paid, and a separate determination follows where DEED needs to decide your eligibility. How long unemployment lasts in Minnesota works that total through into weeks.