Who qualifies for unemployment benefits in Minnesota?

Minnesota settles a wage question and a separation question separately. Wages in your base period build an account; the reason the work ended decides whether anything is paid out of it.

The wages your claim is built on

Your benefits rest on the gross wages every employer paid you across a recent 52-week stretch, which DEED calls your base period. Commissions, bonuses, overtime, vacation pay, severance pay depending on its timing, and wages from other states count. Self-employment earnings usually do not.

Which 52 weeks those are depends on when your application takes effect. By statute the base period is the 4 most recent completed calendar quarters, so an application effective in February or March rests on the previous January 1 through December 31, one effective in May or June on April 1 through March 31, one effective in August or September on July 1 through June 30, and one effective in November or December on October 1 through September 30. Where the first 4 of the most recent 5 completed quarters would give you more wage credits, the statute requires that period to be used instead, so whichever period is richer applies without your having to choose.

Time you lost to injury or illness can be reached past. An applicant who falls short under either period, and who received workers' compensation for a temporary disability or was compensated for lost wages from another source because of their own serious illness, may request a base period that reaches further back: the first 4 of the most recent 6 completed quarters after 7 to 13 weeks of compensated lost work, the first 4 of the most recent 7 after 14 to 26 weeks, the first 4 of the most recent 8 after 27 to 39 weeks, and the first 4 of the most recent 9 after 40 to 52 weeks. It is a request, so it will not happen unless you make it.

Only covered employment builds an account. DEED's noncovered employment includes, among others:

• Most church and religious organization employment
• Student employment, work study, internships, and student nursing
• Work for a sole proprietor by their parent, spouse, or child under the age of 18
• Commission-based insurance or real estate sales, and work as a direct seller
• Agricultural work for someone who did not pay $20,000 in wages in a calendar quarter of the current or prior calendar year and did not employ 4 or more employees in 20 weeks of either year

By statute an account exists only where your wage credits reach 5.3 percent of the state's average annual wage, rounded down to the next lower $100. How much it pays has the weekly figure and what a part-time week is worth.

If you quit

Quitting leaves you ineligible unless it falls into one of the categories DEED lists:

• A good reason caused by the employer
• To accept better employment
• Your own serious illness or injury, or care for an immediate family member's illness or disability
• The job was part-time and your base-period wages are from full-time work lost through no fault of your own
• Unsuitable employment you quit within its first 30 days, or to enter full-time reemployment assistance training
• A layoff notified within the next 30 days, quit before the layoff date
• Domestic abuse of you or your minor child
• Loss of child care, with reasonable efforts made to find new care
• Your spouse's job location changed

Several of those are narrower in the law than the list makes them look.

The illness exception applies only if you told the employer about the medical problem, asked for accommodation, and none was made available; where the illness is a substance use disorder it drops away if you were diagnosed or treated before and have since failed to make consistent efforts to control it. Losing child care counts only if you made a reasonable effort to find other care and asked the employer for time off or another accommodation, and none was available. Quitting within 30 calendar days of a notified layoff leaves you ineligible through the end of the week holding the layoff date.

A good reason caused by the employer means a reason directly related to the employment, for which the employer is responsible, adverse to the worker, and enough to compel an average, reasonable worker to quit rather than remain. Adverse working conditions count only if you complained and gave the employer a reasonable opportunity to correct them. A reason caused by your own employment misconduct is not one, and neither is notification of a future discharge, a layoff for lack of work included.

The law also carries protections DEED's list does not mention. Sexual harassment the employer knew of, or should have known of, and failed to act on in a timely and appropriate way is a good reason caused by the employer. The statute defines it as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, sexually motivated physical contact, or other conduct of a sexual nature that is made a condition of employment, drives an employment decision, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.

The safety reason on that list, domestic abuse of you or your minor child, is wider in the statute, which reaches domestic abuse, sexual assault, or harassment or stalking of you or an immediate family member. A changed spousal job location covers a move with a spouse in the military, and a move with a spouse whose employer transferred their job somewhere that makes commuting impractical.

A leave of absence the employer approved is neither a quit nor a discharge. A voluntary leave and a paid leave are not payable while they last, and a medical leave is not presumed voluntary.

If you were fired

Employment misconduct means intentional, negligent, or indifferent conduct that seriously violates standards the employer has the right to reasonably expect. DEED says absence for illness or injury with proper notice, an inability to meet performance standards, ordinary errors, and honest mistakes probably will not make an applicant ineligible.

The statute's list of what is not employment misconduct runs longer, and its definition is exclusive, so no other definition applies. It excludes:

• Conduct that was a consequence of mental illness or impairment
• Conduct that was a consequence of your inefficiency or inadvertence
• Simple unsatisfactory conduct
• Conduct an average reasonable employee would have engaged in under the circumstances
• Conduct that was a consequence of your inability or incapacity
• Good faith errors in judgment, where judgment was required
• An absence because of your own illness or injury, with proper notice to the employer
• An absence, with proper notice, to give necessary care because of an immediate family member's illness, injury, or disability
• Conduct that was a consequence of a substance use disorder, unless you were diagnosed or treated before and have since failed to make consistent efforts to control it
• Conduct that was a consequence of you or an immediate family member being a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault, or harassment or stalking

That last exclusion has a limit: conduct that breaks Minnesota's driving-while-impaired or implied-consent sections and adversely affects the employment is misconduct even where a substance use disorder caused it.

A discharge for aggravated employment misconduct also strips that employer's wages from your account, which can leave it without enough wages to pay anything. It means an act, on or off the job, that would be a gross misdemeanor or felony and had a significant adverse effect on the employment; no charge or conviction is needed, and a conviction makes you presumed to have committed it. It also covers patient or resident abuse, financial exploitation, or recurring or serious neglect, where the person works for a facility of the kind a separate section of state law defines.

A suspension without pay of 30 calendar days or less for misconduct is not payable either. A suspension without pay that is indefinite, or longer than 30 calendar days, counts as a discharge from the time it begins, and a suspension with pay is not a separation at all.

Being able and available for work

A week is payable only if you were able and willing to accept work in it: transportation and any necessary family care arranged or being arranged, physically and mentally able to work, and willing to accept the hours, wage, commuting distance, and other conditions normal for your occupation and experience. Medical restrictions narrow the work you must look for rather than excusing the search, and benefits based on full-time work mean seeking full-time work unless medical restrictions prevent it.

The statute reads available for suitable employment as ready, willing, and able to accept it, with a genuine attachment to the work force and no restriction that prevents accepting it. Actively seeking it is the diligent effort someone in similar circumstances would make if genuinely interested in work, and a search limited to positions above your training and qualifications does not count. Suitable employment is work in your labor market area reasonably related to your qualifications, weighed against risk to health and safety, prior training, experience, length of unemployment, and distance from your home.

Belonging to a hiring hall, a union that does not allow you to look for work on your own, removes the duty to search personally, so long as you stay in good standing and on its referral list. No week is payable while you are incarcerated in any manner, home monitoring included. By statute, that rule also reaches court-ordered community service, and the reduction runs by the day: your weekly benefit amount is cut by one-fifth for each day in the week you are incarcerated or performing community service. Taking classes means still looking for work and being willing to rearrange or quit them, unless DEED approves full-time training, which stands in place of the work search. Weekly claims and work search covers what each week's request asks of you.

Turning down work

Failing without good cause to apply for suitable employment the commissioner or an employer told you about, or to accept it when offered, leaves you ineligible for all unemployment benefits for 8 calendar weeks. Good cause is a reason that would make a reasonable individual who wants suitable employment do the same: already being in other suitable employment, being in reemployment assistance training, a labor dispute at a former employer where you had already lost the job permanently or indefinitely before the dispute began, or being offered work again by an employer you quit for a good reason that employer caused. The rule reaches offers from a new or former employer only, not a job transfer, a reassignment, or a change in duties during employment.

School staff between terms

Wage credits from an educational institution cannot be used for a week between successive academic years or terms where you have a reasonable assurance of the same work in the next one. That assurance may be written, oral, implied, or established by custom or practice. The denial does not reach employment that is substantially less favorable than the earlier employment, or anyone who worked in a capacity other than instructional, research, or principal administrative, and the statute says an educational assistant is not in an instructional capacity.

When the reason for the job loss is disputed

If DEED needs to decide your eligibility, it mails a separate determination. The Determination of Benefit Account that arrives first is about wages, and it does not by itself mean you will receive benefits.

Both definitions that decide these cases are exclusive, so no other reading of employment misconduct or of a good reason caused by the employer can be substituted. The good reason test is applied to the specific facts of each case, and where the conduct you were discharged for was a single incident, the statute makes that an important fact that must be considered. Denials, appeals, and overpayments covers a determination that goes against you and the deadline for appealing it.

Becoming eligible again after a denial

A denial over a job separation does not have to last the whole benefit year. DEED says you can be eligible for payment again during it by finding new work, earning wages of at least $1,950, and then becoming unemployed through no fault of your own, with an employer who pays into the unemployment insurance fund or a railroad that pays into the railroad unemployment fund.

The statute puts the same test as wages paid for actual work in subsequent covered employment sufficient to meet one-half of what it takes to establish a benefit account, and holds the ineligibility until the end of the calendar week those wages were paid in.