Are you eligible for unemployment in Pennsylvania?

The wage tests count only pay for work covered by the Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation (UC) Law, so self-employment and independent contracting do not count toward them.

The wage tests

Your base year is usually the first 4 of the last 5 completed calendar quarters before your application for benefits (AB) date, which is the Sunday that begins the week you apply. What every covered employer paid you in those quarters decides whether you qualify, and for how much.

A credit week is a Sunday-to-Saturday calendar week in your base year in which you earned $116 or more, no matter when you were paid. Each calendar week can count as only one credit week. The law ties the amount to 16 times the minimum hourly wage under Pennsylvania's Minimum Wage Act, and the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (L&I) currently puts it at $116.

How much unemployment pays shows how your weekly rate is figured. The $68 and $2,718 figures above come from the 2026 rate table.

If a work injury compensable under the Workers' Compensation Act kept you from meeting the wage and credit-week tests, you can ask for an alternate base year: the 4 completed calendar quarters just before the injury. To request it, file a timely appeal from a Notice of Financial Determination that finds you ineligible, and ask the UC Service Center for a redetermination.

If you were fired

Being fired does not by itself disqualify you. The law makes you ineligible for any week your unemployment is due to being fired, or temporarily suspended, for willful misconduct connected with your work. Your employer has to show that what you did rose to that level. L&I describes willful misconduct as any of these:

• Wanton or willful disregard of your employer's interests
• Deliberate violation of the employer's rules
• Disregard of the standards of behavior an employer can rightfully expect from an employee
• Negligence that shows culpability, wrongful intent, evil design, or intentional and substantial disregard of the employer's interests or of your duties and obligations

Poor work performance counts as willful misconduct only where your employer shows you were capable of the work and did not perform up to standards anyway, despite warnings. Work done to the best of your ability does not count.

The law also makes you ineligible after being fired or temporarily suspended for not taking or not passing a drug test given under your employer's established substance abuse policy, unless the test was requested or given in violation of the law or of a collective bargaining agreement.

If you quit

The law makes you ineligible for any week your unemployment is due to "voluntarily leaving work without cause of a necessitous and compelling nature."

Here the burden of proof is yours. You have to show good cause for quitting: a reason that was real and substantial and left you no other alternative. You also have to show that you made every reasonable effort to keep the job before you quit. The law sets these rules for particular quits:

• If your employer is able to offer you other suitable work, leaving because of a disability does not count as a necessitous and compelling cause.
• You are not disqualified for leaving to go with a spouse on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces who must relocate under permanent change of station, activation, or unit deployment orders, if L&I finds the move makes keeping your job impractical or unreasonably difficult.
• Leaving because of domestic violence falls under its own rule.

If you left or missed work because of domestic violence

Since February 20, 2026, Pennsylvania law says you are not disqualified for voluntarily leaving a job, or for failing to attend work, because of domestic violence. The test is whether, due to the domestic violence situation, staying in the job would jeopardize your safety or the safety of a member of your family or household. The rule comes from Act 55 of 2025.

You can verify it on your initial application with any one of these, as long as it documents recent domestic violence:

• An active or recently issued protective order or other order, court records, a police record, medical treatment records, social services records, or child protective services records
• A statement from a qualified professional you sought help from, such as a counselor, shelter worker, member of the clergy, attorney, or health care worker
• A similar statement from a friend or relative you sought help from
• A self-affirmation that staying in the job would jeopardize your safety or the safety of a member of your family or household
• Any other evidence that reasonably proves domestic violence

Your documentation stays confidential, and L&I may not reveal the domestic violence in any notice it sends your employer about your claim. If you verify it and are otherwise eligible, you are considered eligible, and L&I must expedite its decision.

When your employer disputes why the job ended

If you and your employer give different reasons for the separation, the burdens above decide who has to prove what: your employer, if it says you were fired for willful misconduct, and you, if you quit. The UC Service Center issues a determination, and both you and your employer have a right to appeal it. Denials, appeals, and overpayments covers the deadline and the hearing.

If you are self-employed

L&I treats you as a self-employed independent contractor when both of these are true:

• You have been, and will stay, free from control or direction over how you do the work, under your contract and in fact.
• You are customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession, or business.

Wages from any covered job in your base year still count toward the wage tests. Separately, the law makes you ineligible for any week in which you are engaged in self-employment.

There is an exception for a side activity, such as farming, that you already did while you worked full time for an employer. If you are able and available for full-time work, and you keep the activity going without substantial change and not as your main source of livelihood, it does not count as self-employment. Your net earnings from it still count as pay for the week.

If you work part time

A week of less than full-time work still counts as unemployment when your pay for that week is less than your weekly benefit rate plus your partial benefit credit. Your partial benefit credit is the amount you can earn in a week without it reducing your payment, and how much unemployment pays shows how it is figured.

Being able and available, and turning down work

You must be able to work and available for suitable work. Training L&I has approved does not count against you: you are not denied benefits for a week of approved training under this rule or under the rule on refusing suitable work.

The law also makes you ineligible for a week when your unemployment is due to turning down suitable work without good cause. That covers failing to apply for suitable work when and as L&I directs, and failing to accept suitable work offered by the employment office or an employer. An employer's offer counts against you only if the employer reports it to the employment office within 7 days of making it.

If an illness or injury keeps you from working, see disability benefits.

Requalifying after a disqualification

If you were found ineligible for quitting without a necessitous and compelling reason, for misconduct, or for self-employment, you may be able to qualify again later. To requalify, you must work and earn at least 6 times your weekly benefit rate; after that, you may receive benefits if you are totally or partially unemployed and meet every other requirement. Self-employment earnings do not count toward requalifying.

Act 55 of 2025, approved December 22, 2025, changes the amount to 12 times your weekly benefit rate. The Act says that change takes effect in one year, so 6 times remains the rule until then.