About Unemployment Insurance

Learn more background about the history of the UI system and the gaps in the program facing women & families, low-wage and workers of color.

Model State Reforms

Here are all the policies you need to help your state catch up to the changes in the workforce, and provide benefits that meet the needs of today's working families.

Rating Your State

How does your state stack up on the best unemployment insurance practices

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Welcome

In the past thirty years, the economy has changed and left workers with less job security even in the best of economic times. A broad spectrum of protections workers relied on to shield them – health care, pensions and severance pay – have been cut or eliminated. Especially impacted are low-wage workers working in the heart of our economy– in such growing sectors as health care, child care, education and technology. However when these low-wage working families face the increasing prospects of being laid off, they often cannot draw unemployment benefits because the unemployment insurance program has failed to keep pace with the new realities of our diverse and changing workforce.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) works with community organizations and policy makers in states across the nation to reform the unemployment system to respond to the new realities of working families and ensure that the system lives up to its goals.  In this website, a companion to our new book – Changing Workforce, Changing Economy: State Unemployment Insurance Reforms for the 21^st Century, you’ll find a comprehensive agenda for state UI reform and the information you’ll need to pursue change with us.