How we research our guides

Each state has its own unemployment insurance rules. This page explains where our information comes from and how the tools work.

Sources

Each state page is built from official sources only: the state's unemployment statutes on the legislature's own website, the state agency and its appeals office, official forms and notices, and legal aid organizations. National facts (what federal law requires of every state, taxes, overpayment rules, identity fraud, special programs) come from the U.S. Code, the U.S. Department of Labor, the IRS and the Legal Services Corporation. Each page lists its sources and the date it was checked.

How we check

• Every state file is researched and then checked by a second, independent reviewer against the official text, with special care for amounts, weeks, appeal deadlines and what each deadline runs from.
• A state page is published only after that check. Until then, the state appears on our map and in our tables as "not covered yet," with a link to the state's own unemployment website and to the national finder.
• Where something could not be confirmed, we leave it out instead of guessing. We copy deadlines and amounts exactly as the source states them and never round them.

The appeal deadline calculator

The calculator uses only the deadlines in our state data. You pick a level of appeal and enter the date the deadline runs from (the label says which date). It adds the number of calendar days, business days or months in the state's rule to that date. If the state's rule says a deadline that falls on a weekend or holiday moves to the next business day, the calculator moves it, and says so; otherwise it shows the date and the rule in the state's words. Business days skip weekends and federal holidays only, because we do not hold state holiday calendars; check the date with the agency. Where an agency and the statute give different deadlines, we show the shorter one. Where a state sets no fixed number of days, the calculator shows the rule and no date.

The weekly benefit estimate

The estimate is offered only for states whose formula we can apply exactly from the state's own published table or rule. You enter your wages for each quarter of the base period and we apply that formula. The result is labelled as an estimate: the state decides your real amount from its own records. States whose formula depends on information we cannot ask for here have no estimate form, and the state page links to the state's own calculator where it has one.

The documents

The appeal letter, the hearing checklist and the waiver letter are made on your device in English, because they go to a US state agency; on Spanish pages a Spanish explanation is shown beside them. They contain only what you type. When you download, copy or print one, we save only your name, phone or email, state and the document type, as our privacy policy explains.

What we never do

We never say that a person qualifies or that an appeal will succeed. A legal aid office or a lawyer can look at your whole situation.

Report an error

Email us at hello@robinclaim.com with a link to the official source and we'll check it.