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Work search activity
| Unemployment insurance |
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| • Terms and definitions • Court cases • Unemployment insurance programs in the states • Reform proposals related to unemployment insurance • Reform activity in the states related to unemployment insurance • Index of articles about unemployment insurance |
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Work search activity is a term that refers to the requirement that an individual engages in documented efforts to search for work while receiving benefits through the joint federal-state unemployment insurance program. Work search activities may include, for example, applying for a job, going to an interview, creating a resume, or registering with a temporary work agency, among other activities. Specific work search activity requirements vary by state.[1][2]
Background
State work search activity provisions generally require claimants to make a minimum number of work search contacts per week with employers reasonably expected to have suitable openings. The minimum number of weekly contacts required to satisfy work search activity requirements ranged from one per week in states like Delaware and Indiana to five per week in states like Colorado and Florida as of September 2021.[3]
Unemployment insurance recipients also need to log their work search activities. Some states require individuals to submit their logs weekly or monthly to qualify for benefits. Other states may reserve the right to inspect work search activity logs upon request. In most states, valid work search activities include:[3]
- Applying for jobs.
- Interviewing with potential employers.
- Registering for reemployment services with a state career center.
- Registering for work with staffing agencies.
- Attending networking meetings or job fairs.
Some states may also waive work search requirements for certain individuals. For example, people who receive work through a union hiring hall or who have written recall dates from their employer do not have to seek work in Pennsylvania.[4]
Penalties for misreporting work search activities
- See also: Unemployment insurance fraud
State laws governing unemployment insurance may classify unemployment insurance fraud as either a misdemeanor or felony offense, depending on the extent of the fraud. Federal guidelines require states to assess a minimum penalty of 15% of the amount of the fraudulent claim, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. States generally prohibit individuals found guilty of committing unemployment insurance fraud from receiving future benefits for a minimum of six weeks for every week of fraudulent claims.[5][6]
Criminal prosecution under unemployment insurance laws may result in the following penalties, depending on the state:[5][6]
- Fines up to or exceeding $10,000, depending on the state.
- Incarceration.
- Probation in addition to, or in lieu of, incarceration.
- Repayment of fraudulent benefits.
- Forfeiture of future income tax refunds.
- Permanent loss of eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits.
Reform proposals aimed at addressing fraud related to work search activities include tax incentives and changes to the structure and timing of UI benefit payments to encourage genuine job searching. Proposals also include requiring employers to report job offer rejections.
If you know of any reform proposals that are missing, email us.
Incentivize job search efforts and job acceptance
In his 2019 article "Optimal unemployment insurance with monitoring," economist Ofer Setty proposed that job search efforts and job acceptance among unemployment insurance benefits recipients could be incentivized through monitoring procedures, decreasing a worker's UI benefits the longer they are unemployed, and increasing the taxes unemployed individuals pay once they return to work.[7]
| “ | In optimal UI, a risk-neutral planner insures a risk-averse worker against unemployment by setting transfers during unemployment and a wage tax or a subsidy during employment. During unemployment, the worker searches for a job by exerting effort, the level of which is private information. Since the planner cannot observe the job-search effort, the constant benefits that are implied by the first-best allocation would undermine the worker's incentives to search for a job. Therefore, to solve the incentive-insurance trade-off, benefits should continuously decrease during unemployment, and the wage tax upon reemployment should continuously increase.
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In their 2015 article "Unemployment Insurance Fraud and Optimal Monitoring," economists David L. Fuller, B. Ravikumar, and Yuzhe Zhang proposed that incentives to report new employment and disincentives to collect unemployment benefits while employed could reduce fraudulent claims. The authors proposed a constant period between verification checks for employment, tax incentives for individuals who promptly reported new employment between verification checks, and unemployment insurance benefits that decreased with the length of unemployment.[9]
| “ | The most prevalent incentive problem in the U.S. unemployment insurance system is that individuals collect unemployment benefits while being gainfully employed. We examine a model of optimal unemployment insurance where a worker can conceal his employment status and the Unemployment Insurance authority has a technology to verify his employment status. We find that the optimal interval between consecutive monitoring periods is a constant, independent of history. The optimal employment tax is nonmonotonic, increasing between verifications and decreasing immediately after a verification. The optimal unemployment benefits decline with unemployment duration with sharp declines after each verification.[9][8] | ” |
Require employers to report work refusals
- See also: Refusal of work
The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) published a 2020 paper titled "Reporting Employee Work Rejections," proposing that states require employers to report unemployed workers who refuse job offers.[10]
| “ | Individuals aren’t returning to work after being laid off, and are refusing new jobs as well. Instead, they continue to draw taxpayer-funded unemployment insurance benefits. Continuing to collect unemployment after refusing to work is fraud. ...
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See also
- Unemployment insurance
- Unemployment insurance fraud
- Unemployment insurance fraud recovery
- Unemployment taxes
- Unemployment Trust Fund
- Unemployment filings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020-2021
- State government plans to end federal unemployment benefits related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2021
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Arizona Department of Economic Security, "Work Search and Your Eligibility for Unemployment Benefits," accessed May 29, 2021
- ↑ Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency, "Work Search Activities List," accessed June 29, 2021
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Zip Recruiter, "Unemployment Insurance Job Search Requirements Explained," accessed July 20, 2021
- ↑ Office of Unemployment Compensation, "Work Search/Work Registration FAQs," accessed July 20, 2021
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 U.S. Department of Labor, "Report Unemployment Insurance Fraud," accessed May 20, 2021
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Work It Daily, "Are You Committing Unemployment Insurance Fraud By Accident?" April 14, 2020
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Journal of the Econometric Society, "Optimal unemployment insurance with monitoring," May 8, 2019
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, "Unemployment Insurance Fraud and Optimal Monitoring," February 2014
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Foundation for Government Accountability, "Reporting Employee Work Rejections," accessed July 9, 2021
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