Determining whether you will be charged for COVID-related layoffs

Q         If we need to lay off an employee because our business still hasn’t returned to prepandemic production levels, will we be charged for the unemployment? Anyone we laid off last March isn’t currently getting charged to us, but we may have additional layoffs.

A   It depends on the positions taken by your state. In many instances, your unemployment insurance account will be charged in most states at this point.

A little background is in order. Generally, individual employees have been eligible for unemployment benefits if they were laid off due to COVID-19. If an employer temporarily ceased operations with the expectation the employee would return to work, if employees were quarantined and would return to work, or if the place of work was quarantined, then the employees would be eligible for unemployment benefits. And employers cannot directly or indirectly obstruct or impede an employee from filing for unemployment insurance benefits.

In most states, an employer’s unemployment insurance benefits account is generally charged when an employee is laid off or terminated through no fault of her own, and unemployment benefits are paid to her. Many states suspended the charges to the employers’ unemployment insurance benefits account because of COVID in early 2020. Some of those suspensions have now come to an end. Below is a sampling of states in the intermountain area: