Labor Law Center Blog » Blog Archive » Michigan Unemployment Insurance Update

Michigan Unemployment Insurance Update

December 31st, 2006 Posted by Mark

For new Michigan employers, the way to go to join up with the state’s unemployment insurance program could be digital. That is, the state of Michigan has taken important strides in making their unemployment system a 21st century system, complete with full online and electronic reporting and file keeping.

For instance, if you are a Michigan employer this could come in especially handy if you usually have mass layoffs at least once a year. Normally, such layoffs could mean huge swaths of paper files that need to be transferred timely and accurately between your human resource department and the state officials. The electronic record system could also come in handy if you typically have at least 100 former employees filing unemployment benefit request in any given year.

You may also want to look further into Michigan’s electronic system if you regularly use Internet to submit claims or to do other aspects of your human resource day to day business. Or here’s another reason—if you’ve had more than 1000 people laid off in the last three years, each year.

The system works in Michigan because it is the employer—not the former employee—filing the claims for unemployment benefits. That makes sense, because it cuts out the “middle man” in a lot of cases, and that middle man (the former employee) can typically cause an issue because you the employer is then required to verify whatever info that former employee provides the Michigan officials.

With Michigan’s system, on the other hand, you can really directly on your accurate personnel files, including all of the forms you have such as the exit interview form, the employee separation form, and any sort of absence reports or records of disciplinary actions you have to prove that a lay off was actually a firing.