What I’m making fun of is your belief that the labor cost of employees is simply payroll. It isn’t. And UI is part of the labor cost of employees, which we employers expect to be returned to us in dollar value.
Be that as it may, it is paid for by an employer tax, not by the employee himself. Believe me, I’ve had to set hundreds of claimants straight on that one. They as much as demanded their UI check, even though disqualified because “they’d paid into it” and “it was their money” and so on.