Effective Sunday, October 18th, claimants receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) who are unable to complete their weekly certification on their own will need to call the claims center this week, but will no longer have to call in to file certifications.
Moving forward, claimants will need to complete their weekly certification on their own using the self-service tools UI ICE or Interactive Voice Response (IVR) phone system.
Claimants are urged to use as many of the self-serve tools available to them to enable the claims center to better respond to the high volume of calls about issues claimants are not able to address though self-service.
Claimants will have the ability to continue weekly certifications on their own (without receiving the error code 8 message) if they are current on their weekly certifications. "Current" is defined as a claimant who is within 13 days of their last weekly certification or completing back weeks of certification on a PUA claim recently filed.
If the PUA claimant returned to work and is now filing again or had an extended break from their last weekly certification and does not want to claim benefits for those missed weeks, claimant should file for regular Unemployment Insurance.
If regular UI is denied, the claimant should fill out a new PUA claim application to have their PUA claim reopened.
- The new application will be reviewed and the PUA claim reopened manually. This process will take several days to complete.
- If a claimant already submitted supporting wage documents they will not need to upload the documents again
- New PUA applications need to be completed because the claimant's personal situation may have changed since filing an initial PUA claim application months earlier