How to calculate unemployment insurance benefits in Washington ESD - need help figuring out my weekly amount

Washington ESD uses your highest earning quarter from your base period to calculate benefits. Your base period is the first 4 of the last 5 completed quarters before you file. They take your highest quarter wages, divide by 26, then multiply by about 0.04 to get your weekly benefit amount. There's a minimum and maximum though.

i think its more complicated than that... theres also something about needing minimum wages in multiple quarters not just one high quarter

The exact formula is: Weekly Benefit Amount = (Highest Quarter Wages ÷ 26) × 0.0385. But there's a minimum of $295/week and maximum of $999/week as of 2025. So if you made $15,000 in your highest quarter, that's $15,000 ÷ 26 = $576.92, then $576.92 × 0.0385 = $22.21... wait that doesn't seem right.

Honestly the Washington ESD website has a benefit calculator but it's not super clear. What really helped me was calling them directly to get my exact amount calculated, but good luck getting through! I must have called 50 times before I got someone. There's actually a service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) that helped me get through to an actual agent. They have this video demo that shows how it works: https://youtu.be/7DieNd3C7zQ. Saved me hours of busy signals.

Wait, are we talking about regular unemployment or standby? Because standby has different calculations I think.

The sick days you mentioned shouldn't matter as long as you still had wages reported for those weeks. Washington ESD looks at actual wages paid, not hours worked. So if you got paid sick leave, that counts toward your base period wages.

Just went through this myself. Made about $25/hour at my job and my weekly benefit came out to around $580. The key thing is they use GROSS wages, not what you actually took home after taxes.

Pro tip: if you're close to the quarter cutoff dates, it might be worth waiting a few days to file so a higher-earning quarter gets included in your base period calculation.

This is all so confusing! Why can't Washington ESD just make this simpler? I've been trying to figure out my benefits for weeks and every website says something different.

One thing to remember is that you can't get more than 26 weeks of regular unemployment benefits in Washington, so even if your weekly amount is high, there's still a time limit on how much total you can receive.

For what it's worth, Washington's unemployment benefits are actually pretty decent compared to other states. The maximum weekly benefit of $999 is higher than most places.

I used that Claimyr service someone mentioned earlier and it was actually legit. Got connected to a Washington ESD agent in like 20 minutes instead of calling all day. The agent walked me through my exact benefit calculation and explained everything clearly.

Don't forget you also need to meet the job search requirements once you start collecting. That's 3 job search activities per week in Washington, and they can audit your job search log anytime.

Quick question - does overtime pay count the same as regular pay for the benefit calculation? I had a lot of overtime in my highest quarter.

the math is: take your highest quarter wages, divide by 26, then take about 50% of that. thats roughly your weekly benefit amount. not exact but close enough for planning

Make sure you file as soon as possible after becoming unemployed. There's no waiting period in Washington for the first week, and you can't get benefits for weeks before you file your initial claim.

One last thing - make sure all your employers from the base period are listed correctly on your claim. If Washington ESD is missing wages from an employer, it will lower your benefit calculation.