Can You Recover Unemployment Benefits While Still Working? The Answer May Surprise You!
Although it may not come as a surprise to many HR professionals, in Maryland, an employee may, under certain circumstances, receive unemployment benefits while still employed.
Under Section 8-801 Unemployment Status - an individual is considered to be unemployed in any week during which the individual does not perform work for which wages are payable or performs less than fulltime work for which wages payable are less than the weekly benefit amount that would be assigned to the individual plus allowances for dependents.
Thus, for any week a claimant is not fully employed but working all available hours, i.e., his hours were cut from 40 to 20 per week for budgetary reasons, the employee may be eligible for partial unemployment benefits. Under DLLR guidelines, the employee may earn up to $100 a week without any money being deducted from his weekly unemployment benefit amount. After $100, the employee's earnings are deducted dollar-for-dollar from the weekly unemployment benefit amount. If an employee's earnings equal or exceed his weekly unemployment benefit amount, no unemployment benefits would be payable.
For example, if an employee normally earned $400 a week for 40 hours of work has his hours cut in half with an equal cut in his salary, that employee may be eligible for partial unemployment benefits. If the employee's unemployment benefits exceed $200 per week, then the employee would be eligible for the amount of those employment benefits minus the $200 he receives from his employer.
However, if that same employee was eligible only for $190 of unemployment insurance benefits per week, then that employee would not be entitled to receive any additional unemployment compensation.