How many weeks of unemployment can you get in Minnesota?

Those 26 weeks are payable weeks rather than calendar weeks, and the ceiling Minnesota law writes down is an amount of money. Whether your own account reaches 26 is settled by wages your employers already reported, before you request a single payment.

What decides your number of weeks

By statute, the most an account can pay is the lower of 33-1/3 percent of your total wage credits or 26 times your weekly benefit amount. Where the work record is thin, the wage credit limit bites first, which is why the full 26 weeks arrives only where total wage credits come to at least 78 times the weekly amount.

DEED mails you a Determination of Benefit Account after you apply. It shows your weekly benefit amount and the total amount of benefits available, and dividing that total by the weekly amount gives the number of full weekly payments the account holds. The determination does not by itself mean benefits will be paid, and a separate determination follows where DEED has an eligibility decision to make.

Because the ceiling is an amount rather than a count of weeks, a week paid in part draws less from it than a full week does. How much unemployment pays in Minnesota sets out the weekly amount and what reduces it.

Your benefit year, and the nonpayable week

A benefit year is 52 calendar weeks running from the date your benefit account takes effect, and 53 calendar weeks where the account is effective on January 1, April 1, July 1, or October 1. Your account takes effect the Sunday of the week you submit the application, so the year is fixed before your first payment request.

26 payable weeks inside a 52-week year leaves room to stop and start. Weeks you are not eligible for are not paid, and they do not push the end of the year back.

Minnesota also makes the first week you are eligible an unpaid one. DEED calls it the nonpayable week, state law requires it before any benefits can be paid, and you serve only one in the 52 weeks after you apply, so someone laid off again inside that year does not sit through another.

Backdating, and the week you can lose

By statute, an application takes effect the Sunday of the calendar week it was filed. It may be backdated one calendar week, and only where you ask for the backdating within 7 calendar days of filing and you were unemployed during the week being added.

The statute also covers a delay that was not yours. Where someone attempted to file an application and the department prevented them from filing, the application is effective the Sunday of the week they first attempted it.

The day of the week you file does not change the amount you are paid, though the week you file fixes the Sunday your account begins. DEED gives anyone applying for the first time one assigned weekday to start an application, set by the last digit of their Social Security number, and how to file for unemployment in Minnesota carries that schedule.

If your benefits run out

DEED's own benefit extension page says there are currently no extended benefit programs available. It points people who need more help to the state's Get Help page, to community resources, and to CareerForce, and it adds that you should look for work every week.

Minnesota law keeps an extended benefit program on the books for periods when one is switched on. By statute, extended unemployment benefits are paid only while an extended benefit period is in effect, and then only to someone who has exhausted regular benefits, meets the same requirements as for regular benefits, has wage credits of at least 40 times their weekly benefit amount, and is not under a separate denial of extended benefits. The most such a period can add is 50 percent of the maximum regular benefits available in the benefit year, or 80 percent where the state's total unemployment rate has reached 8 percent.

Starting again after your benefit year

If you are still unemployed when your benefit year ends, you may be eligible for a new benefit account. You have to apply again and meet all the eligibility requirements, and a link to apply appears on your benefit account home page once the year is over.

Meeting those requirements takes more than applying again. The statute requires that you have performed actual work in covered employment since your first account took effect, and that you were paid wages in one or more completed calendar quarters that started after that date. Those new wages have to be enough on their own to meet the same wage-credit test a first account has to meet, which is 5.3 percent of the state's average annual wage, rounded down to the next lower $100. One loss of employment cannot produce another benefit account, so if you have not worked since your first claim, the new work test is what stands in the way of a second one. If you were never actually paid anything on that first account, read the withdrawal rule below before you give up on a new one, because the statute writes an exception for exactly that situation.

A new account built on that new work cannot take effect earlier than the Sunday following the end of the most recent completed calendar quarter in which you met the wage-credit test. DEED's own benefit account page gives the shorter version, that you apply again and meet all eligibility requirements, so it is worth knowing what the requirements are before the year runs out.

By statute, an application is not allowed before the Sunday following the end of the benefit year on a prior account, and, except where an account is withdrawn under the rule below, you may establish only one benefit account each 52 calendar weeks. That limit counts accounts established under another state's law and under federal law, not only Minnesota ones.

An account you no longer want can be withdrawn, and the statute is narrow about when. Withdrawal works only where no benefits have been paid on that account and a new application is filed and a new account established at the same time.

That first condition is the one to look at if you were denied and never paid. The statute says an account may be withdrawn after the benefit year has expired, and that the new work requirements do not apply where the applicant was not paid any unemployment benefits on the account being withdrawn. So someone who applied, was denied over the reason their job ended, was paid nothing, and is still out of work when the year runs out can withdraw that unpaid account, file a new application at the same time, and have the new account rest on wage credits they already have, with no new work behind it. A determination of ineligibility that was sent before the withdrawal stays in effect, so withdrawing an account does not undo the decision that stopped it.