Fil­ing for Un­em­ploy­ment

…For the Dum­mies or Just the Broke Col­lege Stu­dent

By: Popoai Tanu­vasa- Lole 

Hey guys, my name is Popoai and I am a cur­rent Ju­nior here at Maryville Uni­ver­sity. This is my very first ar­ti­cle on PAW­PRINTs web­site so let me in­tro­duce my­self !  I have a dou­ble ma­jor in Psy­chol­ogy and Or­ga­ni­za­tional Lead­er­ship with a Mi­nor in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I am also a part of the Mul­ti­cul­tural Schol­ars Pro­gram and the Pres­i­dent of the Hawai­ian Asian and Pa­cific Is­lander As­so­ci­a­tion here on cam­pus.  

I know that cur­rently we all have been af­fected by the Corona Virus in one way or an­other. From now hav­ing to take classes on Zoom to So­cial Dis­tanc­ing. I think we can all agree that this se­mes­ter has been pretty grim thus far. Schools, nonessen­tial stores, and busi­nesses across the coun­try have shut down to help with con­tain­ment ef­forts. Al­though these mea­sures are now nec­es­sary to stop the mass spread of the virus, it has left many peo­ple with­out a job. 

Per­son­ally, as a col­lege stu­dent, I work two jobs, both of which have been closed due to re­cent events. With that be­ing said, and stu­dent loans and debt loom­ing, one thing I have had to learn, which is some­thing I never thought I’d have to do, was file for un­em­ploy­ment. Hon­estly, I feel that the cur­rent school sys­tem does­n’t re­ally teach the proper skills about “Adult­ing.” That is, es­sen­tial skills needed to sim­ply live in the United States and func­tion as an in­de­pen­dent in­di­vid­ual. Such as fil­ing your taxes each year, build­ing credit, how to pay your bills/​bud­get­ing. Most of the real life skills I have learned I have learned by my­self, or out­side of school .

So you can imag­ine the shock that a young col­lege stu­dent who is fi­nan­cially in­de­pen­dent might feel when be­ing put out of work and be­ing told to sim­ple “fig­ure it out.” I was ter­ri­fied of what might hap­pen. How­ever, af­ter con­sult­ing the my per­sonal life coach ( aka my mother) it re­ally is­n’t as daunt­ing as it seems. Here are some quick and easy steps to file for un­em­ploy­ment to help al­le­vi­ate some of that fi­nan­cial stress if your job has been closed be­cause of the virus as well !

1. Google “Un­em­ploy­ment In­sur­ance” and what­ever state you are from, this will bring you to your spe­cific states de­part­ment of em­ploy­ment se­cu­rity web­site ! 

Here is an ex­am­ple : https://​www2.illi­nois.gov/​ides/​Pages/​de­fault.aspx
Cre­ate a user­name and/​or pass­word in or­der to log in to an ac­count to file for un­em­ploy­ment ben­e­fits. 

2. Care­fully fol­low the in­struc­tions to avoid claim de­lays 

3. You’ll re­ceive a con­fir­ma­tion of your claim once your ap­pli­ca­tion is processed.  

4. Re­ceive your ben­e­fits while you are out of work !!!