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File for unemployment. The federal government is increasing the weekly payment. Additionally, I believe this is not limited to California, unemployment compensa

File for unemployment. The federal government is increasing the weekly payment. Additionally, I believe this is not limited to California, unemployment compensation starts from day 1 rather than the second week. Edit: Also unemployment compensation is being extended to job types which previously weren’t covered, like hairdressers and massage therapists. Having been told to stay home from work for Covid should be sufficient to at least get the federal compensation.

3001 6y ago
This is the best route in my opinion. Upskill while collecting unemployment.
- tlapinsk 6y ago
  Completely agree. That's all I've been doing while furloughed and it's actually given me a lot of time to dive deep into things I didn't previously have the time for (AWS CSA Associate studying via Linux Academy and a Coursera Product Management course). As long as your basic necessities are covered (food, shelter, etc.), this is a great way to go.
  - minhazm423 6y ago
    Whats your current career and how do you expect the cert and the coursera course to help?
    - tlapinsk 6y ago
      Currently a PM (although furloughed unfortunately), so the Coursera course has helped me have greater breadth/understanding and so many more tools to bring back to the office if/when business picks up. If my role is cut, I'll jump into the PM job search more actively and have been preparing for that possibility too. In my previous role I was a Software Engineer, and made some great contacts that have some DevOps consulting opportunities. I'd like to take on some of this work and the AWS CSA Associate cert will definitely help. I'm about halfway through Linux Academy training and it has already been invaluable for my overall systems architecture and design thinking. If you have any other thoughts/advice/questions, happy to chat more! Contact info is in my bio TLDR: Currently a furloughed PM (Coursera) and have some cloud consulting opportunities (AWS CSA Associate cert)
OkGoDoIt 6y ago
This should definitely be done, but a caveat against assuming this is a blanket solution: I have plenty of friends in the theater industry who mostly make money as non-employee contract/gig workers. But 2 of these friends also had some minimal part-time work last year where they made under $1000. Because they had a W-2 last year, they are disqualified from getting unemployment based on their contract work, even though their contract work represents 95% of their income. The amount of unemployment you get is based on the amount of money you made at your last job or over the last few quarters. Which means they’re getting almost nothing in unemployment benefits. To make matters worse, the website clearly just shoehorned in the corona-related changes and the application process is extremely confusing for someone in their situation. Even walking them through the process over screen share, as someone who has applied for unemployment benefits twice in the past, I couldn’t really figure out exactly how to answer some of the questions. So there are definitely people getting screwed on unemployment, even if it is working out well for the majority.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  In California, independent contractors and gig workers are allowed to claim unemployment due to COVID, whether or not they were previously a W2 employee. (The same is not true in all states, including presumably the state of the commenter to which I replied.)
- ghostbrainalpha 6y ago
  This brings up a good point about the complication of the unemployment application system. Maybe "Unemployment application screenshare advisor" would be a good job for a lot of people right now. Especially if they have experience with the edge cases.
  - 205guy 6y ago
    This is a great idea, an independent covid-related gig that's totally compatible with call-center experience. I will also add that some states are hiring unemployment office temps to handle the surge in applications, so it would be similar work, just more formal and no charge to the user (which would be the hard part of being independent).

3001 6y ago

This is the best route in my opinion. Upskill while collecting unemployment.

tlapinsk 6y ago
Completely agree. That's all I've been doing while furloughed and it's actually given me a lot of time to dive deep into things I didn't previously have the time for (AWS CSA Associate studying via Linux Academy and a Coursera Product Management course). As long as your basic necessities are covered (food, shelter, etc.), this is a great way to go.
- minhazm423 6y ago
  Whats your current career and how do you expect the cert and the coursera course to help?
  - tlapinsk 6y ago
    Currently a PM (although furloughed unfortunately), so the Coursera course has helped me have greater breadth/understanding and so many more tools to bring back to the office if/when business picks up. If my role is cut, I'll jump into the PM job search more actively and have been preparing for that possibility too. In my previous role I was a Software Engineer, and made some great contacts that have some DevOps consulting opportunities. I'd like to take on some of this work and the AWS CSA Associate cert will definitely help. I'm about halfway through Linux Academy training and it has already been invaluable for my overall systems architecture and design thinking. If you have any other thoughts/advice/questions, happy to chat more! Contact info is in my bio TLDR: Currently a furloughed PM (Coursera) and have some cloud consulting opportunities (AWS CSA Associate cert)

OkGoDoIt 6y ago

This should definitely be done, but a caveat against assuming this is a blanket solution: I have plenty of friends in the theater industry who mostly make money as non-employee contract/gig workers. But 2 of these friends also had some minimal part-time work last year where they made under $1000. Because they had a W-2 last year, they are disqualified from getting unemployment based on their contract work, even though their contract work represents 95% of their income. The amount of unemployment you get is based on the amount of money you made at your last job or over the last few quarters. Which means they’re getting almost nothing in unemployment benefits. To make matters worse, the website clearly just shoehorned in the corona-related changes and the application process is extremely confusing for someone in their situation. Even walking them through the process over screen share, as someone who has applied for unemployment benefits twice in the past, I couldn’t really figure out exactly how to answer some of the questions. So there are definitely people getting screwed on unemployment, even if it is working out well for the majority.

gamblor956 6y ago
In California, independent contractors and gig workers are allowed to claim unemployment due to COVID, whether or not they were previously a W2 employee. (The same is not true in all states, including presumably the state of the commenter to which I replied.)
ghostbrainalpha 6y ago
This brings up a good point about the complication of the unemployment application system. Maybe "Unemployment application screenshare advisor" would be a good job for a lot of people right now. Especially if they have experience with the edge cases.
- 205guy 6y ago
  This is a great idea, an independent covid-related gig that's totally compatible with call-center experience. I will also add that some states are hiring unemployment office temps to handle the surge in applications, so it would be similar work, just more formal and no charge to the user (which would be the hard part of being independent).