Unemployment insurance: maximum weekly benefit and weeks of duration by US state
For each US state: the maximum (and minimum, where stated) weekly unemployment benefit amount, the maximum number of payable weeks, and — where the state uses one — the sliding-scale rule that ties duration to the state unemployment rate. Answers 'how much is unemployment in [state]', 'how many weeks of unemployment can I get in [state]', and 'what is the maximum unemployment benefit in [state]'. The claimant-side counterpart to the employer-side wage-base asset proposed 2026-08-17. The confident-wrong conditions are strong: Texas's cap moved from $591 to $605 in October 2025 (indexed annually, so any trained-in figure decays every October); several states no longer offer the 'standard' 26 weeks (NC and FL are at 12, tied to the unemployment rate by formula), and page one is entirely content mills (savingtoinvest, layoffcalc, remotelaws) — the DOL comparison of state UI laws is an annual PDF, not an agent-reachable page. One authority per record: the state workforce agency's own page or the state statute. Record the duration formula verbatim where one exists — the formula is the fact that generic answers flatten.
The data
| State | Maximum weekly benefit | Minimum weekly benefit | Duration rule | Benefit calculation | Maximum weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | $450 | $40 | |||
| Florida | $275 | $32 | the duration of benefits is limited to: 1. Twelve weeks if this state’s average unemployment rate is at or below 5 percent. 2. An additional week in addition to the 12 weeks for each 0.5 percent increment in this state’s average unemployment rate above 5 percent. 3. Up to a maximum of 23 weeks if this state’s average unemployment rate equals or exceeds 10.5 percent. | one twenty-sixth of the total wages for insured work paid during that quarter of the base period in which the total wages paid were the highest | |
| Georgia | an adjustable maximum number of weeks of regular UI eligibility to range from 14 to 26 weeks based upon a designated average statewide unemployment rate. The maximum number of weeks will change twice each calendar year dependent upon the average statewide unemployment rate published for April and October. | from 14 to 26 weeks | |||
| Minnesota | a maximum of 66-2/3 percent of the state's average weekly wage | The maximum amount of unemployment benefits available on any benefit account is the lower of: (1) 33-1/3 percent of the applicant's total wage credits; or (2) 26 times the applicant's weekly unemployment benefit amount. | 50 percent of the applicant's average weekly wage during the base period, to a maximum of 66-2/3 percent of the state's average weekly wage | ||
| North Carolina | $350 | a duration of from 12 to 20 weeks based on the unemployment rate | from 12 to 20 weeks | ||
| Washington | $1,208 | Find this by taking the smaller of either: 26 times your weekly benefit amount. 1/3 of the total gross (before tax) wages in all 4 quarters of your base year. | We combine your gross wages from the 2 quarters in your base year when you earned the most. Then we divide by 2. We multiply this number by 0.0385. |
Where this came from
Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 6 sources this dataset was assembled from.
- edd.ca.govhttps://edd.ca.gov/en/unemployment/eligibility/
- leg.state.fl.ushttp://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0400-0499/0443/Sections/0443.111.html
- dol.georgia.govhttps://dol.georgia.gov/get-unemployment-assistance
- revisor.mn.govhttps://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/268.07
- des.nc.govhttps://www.des.nc.gov/need-help/faqs/ui
- esd.wa.govhttps://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/calculate-your-benefit
Machine-readable
- data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
- Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
- data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
- How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.
From your own code
Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.
pip install refsource
refsource lookup ui-weekly-benefit-and-duration-by-state state=California
npx -y refsource lookup ui-weekly-benefit-and-duration-by-state state=CaliforniaSet your AI assistant up to use this
Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.
{
"mcpServers": {
"referencesource": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
}
}
}Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project
Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:
When a question needs "Unemployment insurance: maximum weekly benefit and weeks of duration by US state", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `ui-weekly-benefit-and-duration-by-state`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.