Understanding Base Period

• Florida uses the wages you earned during your base period to determine how much you can receive as unemployment benefit compensation. Your base period is the first four of the past five calendar quarters before the date you apply for unemployment. Calendar quarters are Jan 1 to March 31 and April 1 to June 30 as well as July 1 to Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 to Dec. 31. The calendar quarters must be complete. So if you apply on March 16, 2011, your last full calendar quarter was Oct.1 to December 31, 2010, making your base period starting Oct. 1, 2009, to Sept. 30, 2010.
  
  

Calculating Payments

• The AWI looks at the wages you earned as an employee during your base period. It determines in which calendar quarter you earned the most wages and divides that quarter's total wages by 26. The product is your weekly benefit amount. It then totals your entire base period wages and divides that by four. The result is your maximum benefit amount per each benefit year, which is the 52 weeks following your original claim date. Then the AWI divides the most you can collect each benefit year by the amount you will receive each week, and the result is the number of weeks you can collect unemployment.
  
  For example, you earned $36,000 during your benefit year and $9,000 during your highest earning quarter. With these numbers, your weekly payment would be $346 for 26 weeks.
  
  

Maximum Benefits

• The amount of unemployment benefits you qualify for is just one side of the story. Florida law also limits the amount based on the average salary of the state's workers. This prevents abuse of the system and ensures that the pool from which benefits are drawn is not exhausted by a few claimants who have earned high salaries during their base periods. The maximums can change per year but as of January 2011, you cannot collect more than $275 per week for a maximum amount of 26 weeks. Even if you technically qualify for more compensation, you will never actually receive more than the Florida maximum.
  
  

Emergency Unemployment Benefits

• One exception to the Florida maximum unemployment laws is the addition of emergency unemployment (EU) benefits. When the country goes through high levels of unemployment, Congress can enact these federal extensions. Each state receives money to extend benefits to its citizens based on the guidelines set by Congress. Although you receive your emergency extension payments from the AWI, these are not Florida unemployment benefits. In fact, you cannot collect emergency unemployment until you have already exhausted your Florida benefits. How much and how long you can collect these benefits is determined by federal law and subject to change. For information on current emergency unemployment benefits, contact the AWI.