Unemployment benefits and partial unemployment benefits can pay a worker for the amount of money he or she normally would have made had the person not lost his or her job. They are not available to someone who quits or gets fired. They are only available if a person loses the ability to work due to circumstances outside of his or her control, such as a company layoff. They are meant to help a worker avoid financial stress while he or she looks for another job.
Unemployment insurance benefits are not only available to someone who lost his or her job entirely. They may also apply to a worker who is still working part-time but whose hours have been cut due to circumstances such as COVID-19. Many insurance programs in California offer partial unemployment benefits to workers in these situations. Partial unemployment could reimburse part of an employee’s regular wages—the amount he or she has lost due to a change in hours or wages.
If COVID-19 or different circumstances outside of your control led to your employer cutting your hours, you may qualify for partial unemployment benefits. To qualify, you must be unemployed or partially unemployed. Your regular wages, minus either 25% or $25 (whichever is greater), must be less than you would earn weekly in unemployment benefits. If you qualify, you could receive a check covering the difference between your regular wages and what you make now. The amount in unemployment benefits you could receive depends on how much you earned in the base period of the claim.