Currently, Wisconsin's student exclusion does not exclude employers from paying state UI taxes on these individuals. The summer exchange program which brings foreign university students here to work for the summer and to do some travel over here will not apply to them either, because they are not in school and not looking for an education while they are here but are in summer programs. The second change relates to what appears to be a material change in the federal interpretation of new work in the unemployment insurance program letter 41-98. The program letter was discussed with the Council in the last bill session. This is a federal conformity requirement, which means that if we do not make the change, we risk losing the tax credit for state employers for federal unemployment tax purposes, and we risk losing administrative funds, which total nearly a billion dollars if added together annually.
Arrangement refers to the distribution of hours over a work week.
Number deals with the number of hours of weekly work required. This is why the employer and employee are new to another. Secondly, new work could be an offer of reemployment to an individual by a previous employer with whom the individual does not have a contract of employment at the time the offer is made. So this could include a former employer if there has been some break in the employment relationship. Remember, for unemployment insurance purposes, a layoff for an indefinite period, rather then a specific or definite period, is regarded as a termination of the employment relationship.