8.30.2008

Spoke too soon

OK, so I jumped the gun a bit when I said I was no longer unemployed, but rather "retired". It seems that while I wasn't paying close attention, the Federal Government decided to authorize Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) for us folks who use up our standard 26 weeks, e.g., me. So I get a letter from the VEC with a form to fill out to apply for EUC, which I send in and get approved for another 13 weeks.

So I'm coming out of retirement for another three months of grasping at straws. The pickins, always slim, have turned downright skeletal; but somehow I don't think the VEC will accept "couldn't find anything I wasn't either drastically overqualified or drastically underqualified for" as an excuse for not making my two contacts a week. (Although, curiously, the online weekly claim form no longer asks me how many contacts I made in the previous week, or asks for details. Those questions just disappeared after the 26th week. But I was told I still had to meet the same criteria for "active job-hunting". Go figure.)

3 comments:

Allen G said...

On the plus side, you get three months worth of taxes returned to you.

Major Rakal said...

I suppose that's one way to look at it. However, unemployment compensation is Federal-taxable, so I get to pay taxes again on my tax money that I'm getting back...

Allen G said...

Ugh. Up here they just take the taxes off the top (you just don't get that money in the first place).

Never understood why gov't would give you money, and then tax it back. (They already *had* the money, after all). Guess that's why I'm not in the civil service.