Unfortunately, UI tax liabilities are only the most obvious risk created by employee separations and unemployment insurance claims.  Unemployment insurance claims often expose organizations to other potential liabilities: from wage and hour violations for misclassifying independent contractors to providing plaintiffs with discovery opportunities in other employment litigation settings. Thus, effective management of your organization's unemployment insurance experience provides you with significant opportunities. From improving your organization’s talent management results and its hiring and on-boarding processes, effective UI management can enhance your organization’s performance management activities, establish sound discipline and termination procedures, and reduce its exposure to discrimination and wrongful discharge claims. Effective UI management activities will additionally help your organization assess human capital risks, measure supervisor and manager performance, more accurately allocate resources and have a positive impact on the bottom line. Thus, while UI tax liabilities are the most obvious risk created by employee separations and unemployment insurance claims activity, they increasingly expose your organization to other potential liabilities and increasingly become the starting point for more detailed employment compliance management issues. UI-related activities now often represent the initial stages of increasingly more intense analysis of your employment policy and practices that can result in significant liabilities.

More than 40 million Americans have become unemployed because of COVID-19. This represents a catastrophic employment disruption and is a significant loss of employment talent. In response, more than 1 in 5 American workers have filed for unemployment insurance benefits. For employers, this has caused significant potential liability, and 2021UI tax rates are significantly higher than they have been in a number of years. Importantly, the depression level unemployment caused by the coronavirus will cause unemployment tax rates and liabilities to increase drastically in 2022. In this environment, employers should take the necessary steps to identify and manage future UI tax liabilities. Understanding the key elements of your unemployment insurance experience can provide your organization with important information about its financial and human resource management decision-making process.