NYS Department of Labor benefits - how does underemployment differ from unemployment eligibility?
I'm really confused about whether I qualify for NYS Department of Labor benefits. I lost my full-time job at a marketing firm three months ago and have been working part-time at a retail store for the past six weeks. I'm only getting about 15 hours a week at $14/hour, which is way less than what I need to survive. My old job paid $28/hour for 40 hours. When I tried to file my weekly claim, the system asked about partial earnings and I'm not sure if this counts as unemployment or underemployment. Does NYS Department of Labor treat these situations differently? I'm worried I might be doing something wrong with my weekly certifications.
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Tasia Synder
You can definitely collect partial unemployment benefits from NYS Department of Labor while working part-time! This is called 'partial unemployment' and it's designed exactly for situations like yours. When you file your weekly claim, you report your part-time earnings and NYS Department of Labor calculates a reduced benefit amount. The key is that your part-time hours have to be less than 4 days per week OR your weekly earnings have to be less than your weekly benefit rate. Since you're only working 15 hours, you should qualify.
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Natalia Stone
•Thank you! So I should keep filing my weekly claims and just report the retail earnings? I was scared they'd cut me off completely.
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Selena Bautista
yeah same thing happened to me last year... took forever to get through to someone at NYS Department of Labor to explain the partial benefits thing. the online system is confusing as hell about it
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Mohamed Anderson
The formula is pretty straightforward once you understand it. NYS Department of Labor takes your part-time earnings, subtracts $50 (that's the earning disregard), then subtracts that amount from your weekly benefit rate. So if your weekly benefit is $400 and you earn $200 from the retail job, you'd get $400 - ($200 - $50) = $250 in unemployment benefits that week. You still need to be actively job searching for full-time work though.
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Ellie Perry
•Wait, is that $50 thing new? I thought they changed the earnings disregard amount recently but I can't remember what it is now.
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Landon Morgan
Honestly the whole NYS Department of Labor system is set up to confuse people and make them mess up their claims. I've been dealing with adjudication issues for months because I reported my part-time work wrong on one weekly claim. Now they're saying I might have an overpayment even though I was trying to follow the rules!!!
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Teresa Boyd
If you're having trouble getting through to NYS Department of Labor to clarify the partial benefits rules, I had success using a service called Claimyr (claimyr.com). They actually got me connected to a real person who explained exactly how to report my part-time earnings without screwing up my claim. There's a video demo at https://youtu.be/qyftW-mnTNI that shows how it works. Saved me hours of calling and getting hung up on.
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Natalia Stone
•That sounds helpful - I've been calling for two weeks trying to get clarification on the partial benefits calculation.
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Lourdes Fox
Just keep doing your weekly certifications and be honest about your earnings! The worst thing you can do is not report the part-time income because NYS Department of Labor will eventually find out through quarterly wage reports and then you'll have a real mess to deal with.
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