Reduced Payments

• Claimants must report any earnings on their weekly or biweekly claim reports which, depending on the state, may be filed by mail, telephone or online. State unemployment programs deduct earnings from the amount of a claimant's weekly benefits. Thus, if a claimant who receives the maximum California payment of $450 per week earns $200 doing temporary work, she will receive $250 in unemployment for the week.
  
  

No Payments

• States stop paying benefits when temporary work earnings exceed unemployment benefits. For example, a Californian who earned $600 doing temporary work one week earned more than the maximum $450 a week unemployment payout and therefore receives no benefits.
  
  

Resumption of Benefits

• Because beneficiaries do not close their claims when they take temporary work, their payments resume immediately when temporary work ends. Claimants simply stop reporting earnings on their weekly unemployment claims and payments resume in full. They also continue to draw off their previously assigned benefits allotment. Accordingly, if a Californian who receives the maximum $11,700 per benefit year claimed $450 for two weeks before taking full-time temporary work, she will have a remaining balance of $9,800 from which to draw when her temporary work ends.
  
  

Extension

• Temporary work helps extend the life of an unemployment claim. That's why if a claimant is eligible for a full 26 weeks of state unemployment benefits when drawn in full, and she claims four weeks before working two weeks in which she earns more than her weekly payout, she'll have 22 weeks remaining after her temporary work ends. Her claim will then last 28 weeks.