America's system of unemployment insurance (UI) was created in the midst of the Great Depression as a primary component of the Social Security Act of 1935. The unemployment benefit, a cash payment disbursed to unemployed individuals, fulfills a dual role of providing individuals with temporary support when they lose their jobs, and sustaining consumer spending to stimulate local economies. The UI system is a prophylaxis against and a treatment for economic recessions. The system is funded by a federal payroll tax on employers, against which a partial credit may be claimed if the employer paid into a state-administered unemployment insurance fund. This mode of funding has encouraged all states to enact and administer their own UI programs. Today, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands have UI regimes for their workers, administered under state-set eligibility criteria and benefit levels. Federal law, however, prescribes the minimum standards that states must meet to have their programs certified for federal funding.

In New York, UI benefits are available to a worker who is “totally unemployed”: receiving no income for services for a given workweek and unable to engage in the usual employment for which the worker is reasonably fitted by training or education. The worker must have achieved certain monetary eligibility by receiving income during a “base period” prior to becoming unemployed. The worker must also be able to work, be available to work, and be actively seeking work. Additionally, a UI claimant may be disqualified from receiving benefits if the claimant left the prior position voluntarily without good cause, or if the involuntary unemployment was caused by the worker's misconduct in the prior position or criminal activity.