State-Issued Unemployment Notices In Response to CARES Act Directive Slow to Be Published

In May 2020, the Department of Labor issued UIPL 13-20 directing state unemployment agencies to develop and issue notices for employers in their state to use to notify employees of the availability of unemployment benefits. After more than a month having passed, these notices are challenging to find, even on a state’s newly developed COVID-19 unemployment webpage. Ostensibly, many of these notices may not even exist. To date, CWC has been able to locate approximately 11 of these new notices, many of which were issued by states that did not require that notice be given before COVID-19. We have been able to locate notices for Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and Washington.

For states which have neither published COVID-19 related notices, nor previously required them, members may wish to give departing employees a copy of a state’s general unemployment workplace poster. As an aid to members, CWC has developed a State Unemployment Notice Requirements resource which lists state notice requirements that were in effect before the pandemic.