At Governor Cuomo’s direction, NYS DOL has changed the way partial unemployment benefits are determined for those who are working part-time. With the new regulation, partial unemployment insurance (UI) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits will now be based on the number of hours you work in a week instead of the number of days you work.
This update will go into effect for work completed during the benefit week of Monday, January 18, 2021 to Sunday, January 24, 2021 – and all benefit weeks going forward. The first time you certify under this new system will be on or after Sunday, January 24, 2021.
Under the new approach, you can work up to 30 hours in a week and still receive some unemployment benefits
if you earn $504 or less in gross pay. Instead of having your benefits reduced by 25% for each day you engage in part-time work, reductions will be based on hours worked.
NYS DOL's certification system will still ask for the number of days you worked — you should use this chart to convert the hours you worked into the number of “days” to report.
0-4 hours: 0 days
5-10 hours: 1 day
11-20 hours: 2 days
21-30 hours: 3 days
31+ hours: 4 days
When totaling hours for each week, you should only count up to 10 hours per day. That means if you worked 12 hours in one day, you will only count 10 of those hours in your weekly total for that day.
For more information and FAQs, go to
on.ny.gov/partialui.
Again, this certification change will go into effect starting on Sunday, January 24, 2021.
