21. Am I eligible for federal extended UI benefits?

If you have used up or “exhausted” your regular UI, and you are not eligible for any other state, federal or Canadian UI, you may be eligible to receive federal extended UI. The only difference in monetary eligibility requirements for state and federal UI is that you need to have worked approximately 20 weeks (federal) rather than 15 weeks (state) to be eligible. Congress passed the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Act of 2008 which provided that anyone who had filed a regular claim after May 7, 2006 and remained unemployed as of July 7, 2008 was eligible for the first federal extended benefits. At this writing, additional extensions now provide Massachusetts unemployed workers with a total of 33 weeks of federal extended UI. Individuals can apply for federal extended UI until December 31, 2009 and can collect on this claim until May 31, 2010. The $25 extra weekly benefit funded by the federal government (see Q. 5) will apply to extended benefits as well.

Under state law, whenever there is a program of federal extended UI, regular UI is capped at 26 weeks (instead of the maximum of 30 weeks). Therefore, individuals will be able to collect up to 26 weeks of regular UI and up to 33 weeks of federal extended UI for a maximum total of 59 weeks. DUA’s toll-free hotline # for federal extended benefits is 1-888-998-8418 (with Spanish and Portuguese prompts).