ABA Family Legal Guide

Law and the Workplace

Leaving a Job

Unemployment Insurance

What will disqualify a worker from receiving Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits?

As a general rule, workers are disqualified if they voluntarily quit without good cause or were fired for misconduct. In some states, even if workers' conduct disqualifies them, the disqualification will last only for a specific length of time, after which they will be eligible to receive UI benefits.

The meaning of good cause varies greatly among the states. Some states consider certain types of personal reasons as good cause, such as having to care for a sick relative or following a spouse who has found work in another state. Most states, however, require that good cause be due to the employer's actions. For example, working conditions that are so bad that they would cause a reasonable person to quit would be considered good cause in some states. The "reasonable person" perspective is very important to determining good cause. It is not enough that a situation is intolerable to a specific worker; the conditions must be such that a reasonable person, in the same position as the employee, would feel compelled to quit.

The meaning of misconduct also varies by state, but incompetence alone generally is not considered misconduct. Violations of known company rules and insubordination are examples of employee behavior normally deemed to be misconduct.