"Vandelay Industries!!! Say Vandelay Industries!!!!!"
Posted on 06/01/2011 9:31:59 PM PDT by fightinJAG
If you're getting unemployment checks in Washington, you know you're supposed to be applying for three jobs a week. But state officials said they've busted more than 9,000 people who failed to fulfill that requirement while collecting unemployment benefits last year.
They included a woman who said she stopped at a movie theater to ask about a job, while on her way to her church wedding in Texas, officials said Tuesday.
"Unrealistic," they quoted a state investigator as saying. After scrutinizing her job-search efforts, the Employment Security Department said the woman owed the state in $1,400 in jobless benefits she didn't earn.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.com ...
The standards for getting unemployment are incredibly low. If you can’t manage it, you’re either deliberately not trying, or you know nothing about the internet. All you have to do is get an account set up on Careerbuilder or one of the other big jobsites, and you’ll easily be able to do the three-job/wk requirement in less than 30 minutes, leaving you the rest of the week to go to the movies and otherwise waste time, if you’re just in it for the unemployment checks. For those of us who actually wanted a job, making the 3/wk minimum was trivial, since I at least was going for easily 40 jobs/wk.
I thought Pelosi said they should paint pictures, write poems or learn to play the guitar while they were unemployed.
As someone who has worked over 15 years at two different state’s (Iowa and Texas) unemployment offices, I assure you that this is true in all 50 states. There is a work search requirement and if they find you haven’t been doing it, it’s considered an overpayment. You do have appeal rights, though.
"Vandelay Industries!!! Say Vandelay Industries!!!!!"
Every week I have lots of people calling to see if I have any job openings. My business listing is just my acronym with no address and callers generally ask the full name and business address. What a scam. IMO they need to at least provide written proof that they have personally visited businesses to inquire about openings such as including a written verification from someone at the company they contacted.
This is a stupid waste of time requirement. I don’t know how it works in WA, but in PA we pay into the system. If we want to sit around or in most cases work under the table until it runs out, that is our business. Don’t the WA Gov’t beadles have anything better to do than track down these people in this economy?
Unemployment is an employer expense, not an employee expense.
I’ve had at least 5 people come in this week “to apply” for a job. I can’t take them seriously when they show up in a tee, cut-offs and flip-flops. I refuse to sign their job search unless they ask what openings we have and are dressed appropriately for an interview.
We pay into it here in PA.
Good for you. I told one caller today to fax me her resume. She said it would be a few days as she was still working on it. Said she’d only been looking for a job for a couple of days but only because her benefits were about to run out. Wonder what she has been doing the other 98 weeks.
Sounds fair enough to me.
“Earlier this year, state officials said nearly 7,000 people lied and cheated to collect unemployment checks last year, a 56 percent rise in fraud cases since 2009.”
Shocking :)
Employer expense on employee’s behalf might as well be considered employee expense, since theoretically it too comes out of the paycheck.
Duh! (Does this have to be even argued?!)
Remember though that the jobs the person searches for must be in their regular line of work, the guy that operated heavy machinery doesn’t have to check with the local hospital to see if they need any surgeons.
So then what is that box “CA SDI” on my W2? Employee’s pay into it here in CA...
SDI is State Disibility Insurance.
You pay disibility, the employer pays unemployment.
Unemployment rates vary between employers, the State sets the base rate and the percent the employer pays is above or below the set rate depending on how many people they lay off/fire draw against their account.
The employer also pays a federal unemployment insurance based on your wages.
After talking with a few family members about the gamut of unemployment benefits, it does seem to work best for those that have no real interest in working.
To keep getting the benefits, one must avoid applying for a job where they might receive a real job offer in return, ie: "Sure, we would love you to come and wash dishes at our diner!"
When one is out of work, their 'job' is to find a job, not to work the system so that they continue eating out of the government trough.
Extending benefits, might have felt good for congress critters, but in the long run, all it really did is to benefit a bunch of scammers.
Seriously, I know a lot of good folks that are having trouble finding work and some of them have taken employment for many dollars less than they used to earn. My hat is off to them.
If I was an employer hiring, I would have to look twice at an applicant that said they took benefits for 98 weeks. It means they walked away from work, because though it is slim, it is still out there.
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