Iowa Workforce Development has seen more than 100,000 unemployment claims in the last two weeks, but everyone who has been laid off or lost their job might not have filed.
IWD deputy director, Ryan West, encourages anyone impacted by COVID-19 to file. “You don’t want to delay — you want to get that done now. You going to want to go to IowaWorkforce.gov, and get your claim on file…you just click on the individual tab, it’s real easy to navigate through,” West says.
West says employers pay into the unemployment fund quarterly, and that information is used to determine your eligibility.
“They will submit to us the amount of wages their employees earned, and then we put the information into what we call a wage line for each individual,” West explains. “And so, if an individual ever has to file for unemployment, that information is automatically generated based on their social security number, and that will lay out what they are monetarily eligible for,” West says.
The federal CARES Act was recently passed that will allow more people to file for unemployment. West says they are not ready yet to pay that part out. He says they have to wait for guidance from the Department of Labor on how that will work and will start issuing that unemployment once they get that information. He suggests if you will fall under the CARES Act provisions that you should go ahead and file to get into the system.
“If you are in that situation as a sole provider, self-employed, make sure you are filing your claim. Just get ahead and get your claim on file and then again you’ll want to continue to do your weekly claims,” West says. He says they have been working to get everyone’s claims processed, and says there will be some delays, but they will work through it.
(By Janelle Tucker, KMCH, Manchester)