For the past 16 months, I have been working from my home in Ohio for a
company in California.  Today I received notification that I will be
laid off next month, until August.

According to the agency I work for, I can file for unemployment
compensation.  They don't seem to know if I should file for Ohio or
California, however, and neither California's EDD nor Ohio's DOJFS
sites are very clear.  Can one of you clear this up for me?

---

Clarification of Question by sapphire_rose-ga on 21 Apr 2005 17:18 PDT

Hello Pinkfreud,

Thank you very much!  Please post your comment as an answer so you can be paid.

-Rose

Thank you very much for accepting my remarks as your answer.

As I indicated in my comment below, I once worked for the Oklahoma
Employment Security Commission, the agency which handles unemployment
compensation in my state.

There is no necessity for the claimant to determine in which state or
states unemployment taxes were paid. When you file your initial claim
for unemployment compensation, you will be asked to provide your
recent work history, and the friendly (I hope!) folks in your state
office will take it from there. Fortunately, everything is fully
computerized, and access to other states' unemployment tax records is
virtually instantaneous. Even if you have worked in many different
states, it is not difficult to locate and tally all the wages on which
former employers paid unemployment tax.

It will probably save time and effort if, when you first arrive at the
Department of Job and Family Services office, you mention that your
most recent employer was based in California. This will help ensure
that you are given the correct forms to fill out.

Be sure to file your claim for benefits as soon as you become
unemployed. The sooner you file, the sooner you are likely to begin
receiving benefits.

Here you'll find some instructions on filing your claim:

Career Explorer
http://www.careerexplorer.net/unemployment/ohio-unemployment-benefits.asp

Unemployment Office List & Resource Guide
http://www.unemploymentoffice.net/State_resources/ohio.htm

If there's anything else I can do for you, please request
clarification. I'll be glad to offer further assistance before you
rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

Thank you for a quick and helpful answer.

You don't need to make this determination. It will be done for you by
the folks at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Determining which state to file on is simply a matter of finding out
where the unemployment taxes were paid. In this case, it's likely to
have been California, but you do NOT need to go to California to file
a claim. Every office that handles unemployment claims is capable of
filing an out-of-state claim. It's a routine matter, and the folks at
the Department of Job and Family Services won't have any difficult
with it. I used to work in an office that handled initial unemployment
claims (in Oklahoma). Approximately twenty percent of our new claims
were out-of-state claims.