Claim Unemployment Benefits

Wisconsin State LogoUnemployment benefits in Wisconsin might not let you to maintain daily life you had while employed, but the benefits can help you remain economically solvent between jobs. Your benefit rate is based on your prior wages, with higher earnings resulting in highly weekly benefits. State laws set limits for both weekly benefits and total collective benefits, but federal funding might add to your total allotment.

After you are jobless in Wisconsin you must get in touch with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce office to collect unemployment benefits. Staff members at the department will assess your wages to decide the amount of unemployment benefits you are suitable to receive. Like most other states, Wisconsin has a minimum and a maximum benefit amount that unemployed workers can collect each week in spite of how much money they earned while they were employed.

The Maximum Amount of Unemployment Benefits in Wisconsin

Regarding weekly unemployment benefits, the highest amount obtainable in Wisconsin as of 2011 is $363. Generally, you may claim unemployment benefits for 26 weeks. Thus the highest amount of total benefits an unemployed person can collect in the state is $9,438. You could claim this sum over the span of a year if you opt-by not filling for benefits some weeks—but you can collect 26 payments.

Understanding Your Base Period

Your base period is a 12-month period before filing for unemployment. Dividing the year into fixed three-month quarters, Wisconsin describes the base period as first four of the five completed calendar quarters previous to a worker’s job loss.

In other words, if you filed for unemployment in the week of July 4, 2010, your base period would be from April 2009 till March 2010. Anything you made in the last complete quarter before the week you filed-which in this Instance is April through June 2010—does not add up toward the year-long total earnings employed to estimate your unemployment benefits.

Alternative Base Period (ABP)

If you do not have adequate wages to be eligible for a claim using the base period described above, an “alternate base period” will be employed. The alternate base period will be the 4 most recently completed calendar quarters prior to the week you filed your initial claim application for a new benefit year.

Extended Base Periods (EBP)

Wisconsin does not provide Extended Base period.

Determining Your High Quarter

Next, you need to work out your highest-paid quarter, or high quarter. This is basically defined as the quarter within your base period during which you made the maximum wages, adding up earnings from all work you had.

Remember that the quarters are set periods. You must not choose consecutive months randomly, but keep to calendar quarters: January through March, April through June, July through September and October through December.

Calculating Unemployment Benefits

Like most other unemployment welfare plans, the Wisconsin unemployment insurance too decides your weekly benefit amount based on the wages you earned during the base period. Although the total wage earned during the base period decides your eligibility for the program, the actual amount of the benefit will be calculated based on your highest earning quarter. You will receive 4% of your high-quarter earnings as your weekly benefit. To estimate your earnings check on Wisconsin unemployment calculator.

The formula used to calculate the benefit is mandated by the federal law.