Note: You can find prior versions of these questions at this October 2020 post, which has the questions that existed as of September 2020.
The initial claim and weekly certification questions as of June 2022 are also available. The June 2007 weekly certification questions (all 11 of them) and the 2009 claimants’ handbook focused on how to answer those 11 questions are also available.
Here are the summer 2025 versions (with Spanish versions again available)
- Initial claims questions in English — 19 pages long (was 61 pages long).
- Initial claims questions in Spanish — 19 pages long.
- Weekly certification questions in English — 26 pages long (was 82 pages long).
- Weekly certification questions in Spanish — 20 pages long.
Caution: These 2025 pages from the Department are low-resolution scans, and so the text on some of these pages is not readable. As a result, you will need to look at the 2022 pages to understand what some of the 2025 pages state. In addition, many 2025 pages are missing from the initial and weekly certification process, and so these 2025 pages are incomplete.
Keep in mind that you file an initial claim when you have suffered a job loss. But, the week being claimed depends not on that job loss but when you want unemployment benefits to start. And, keep in mind that an initial claim does not pay you any unemployment benefits.
To be paid benefits for a particular week, you must then file a weekly certification that shows you meet all the eligibility criteria — able and available for work, searching for work, willing to accept any jobs offered you, not missing any work available to you, reporting all wages or pay for any services you have performed for another, and reporting other kinds of pay — for being paid unemployment benefits for that particular week.
This additional information being asked of you is why the weekly certification process is longer and more complicated. Any mistakes you make with the weekly certification questions will be presumed fraudulent, unless you can show that the mistake was not your fault (i.e., that you relied on mistaken advice from a Department representative or you have a learning disability). Keep in mind that the Department adjudicators doing any investigation are likely to be prosecuting you for those mistakes, and not actually listening to you.
So, keep you own records of what is told you by your employer and Department staff and what you file (save PDFs of your own initial claims and weekly certifications as you file them by selecting that option at the end of each claim).
Bonus claim-filing information
Here are on-line weekly certification questions and weekly certifications questions when filing by phone (before the filing-by-phone system was eliminated completely in 2017).
- On-line weekly certification questions as of 2007.
- On-line weekly certification questions as of the Fall of 2013 — when the first compound question was added and led to the first wave of unemployment fraud cases in the state.
- Weekly certification phone-filing prompts as of 2012.
- Weekly certification phone-filing prompts as of 2013 — when the first compound question was added and led to the first wave of unemployment fraud cases in the state.