just curious, can one collect unemployment during severance?
If the company keeps you on payroll and pays you weekly, then you cannot collect unemployment. If the company gives you a lump sum then you may be able to.
If a condition of the severance is that you sign a document saying you are quitting instead of being fired, then you cannot collect unemployment.
My understanding comes from recent googling because of similar layoffs that happened at my company. I'd welcome more informed thoughts on the matter.
Yep, in the case of the lump sum you're not being paid after you're given the lump sum. I was laid off in 2014. Got 4 months in a lump sum when I went out the door. There were no problems applying for unemployment.
This is false. If a company makes you sign a statement that you are quitting instead of being fired as a condition of getting severance, they are committing unemployment insurance fraud and are subject to civil and criminal sanction in most states.
(The point of trying to make employees do this is to avoid claims against the company's unemployment insurance account in the state. How UI works differs from state to state, but in all instances claims against UI increases the company's ongoing UI expense.)
I went with the latter because it paid better.
For a while I was always stressed out about background checks, because it showed that I was working two jobs. (I got a job to replace it almost immediately, but continued to get paid by the old place.)
"The Work Number" is a very popular service for this. They are owned by Equifax.
edit: apparently in some states you can - at least in Colorado in 2008, you could not. Generally your unemployment would be reduced by the amount of income you brought in. So, in any case, severance payments from a typical tech job would far exceed UE anyway...