Filing for Missouri Unemployment
*This is the story of my experience filing for unemployment in my resident state, Missouri. Each state will have unique processes and benefits provided. This is not intended to be legal advice or representative of all experiences. It is simply my own personal experience in the state of Missouri. My intention is to provide some comfort to you as you encounter this step of your job seeker journey.
I hate dealing with money.
I didn’t apply for unemployment when I first lost my job in February because I knew I still had income from my severance. But now that’s done, and I need to pay my bills. Last week, I figured out how to pay down half my debt to reduce my monthly expenses and calculated how much I need to make each month to break even.
Mom is excited to go back to her natural, Depression-era behaviors like not buying name brands, making pretty much everything from scratch, and calculating if one store has the better deal by unit count. She is going to be responsible for groceries because I’m not capable of calculating price by ounce and nor do I care that much. However, she thoroughly enjoys doing this. Keeps a notebook and everything. She’s cute.
She’s also really excited to have an excuse to get a part-time job. She’s not the type of person who enjoys retirement because she feels like she has nothing to do all day. We’ve been encouraging her to volunteer but she’s kind of shy and I think that makes her nervous to meet new people without a buddy. Her first application was to the store where we buy our bird food, Wild Birds Unlimited. It’s a small, local business so they still use paper applications. She thought it was really funny to list “Masters in Mathematics” under her education level, and she wasn’t sure what to put down for job experience because she hasn’t worked in retail in 50 years. She asked the assistant manager at the store, and they said, “We’re all retired. Whatever you put down is fine.”
Step 1: Research
The first thing that I did was to research what to expect. This YouTube video showed the online application interface.
The Missouri state website has a lot of information on it. I looked at the FAQs but they were still kind of confusing. My questions going into this were primarily about income limitations with part-time employment, because I’ve been told that you have an income cap for disability in Missouri. I haven’t looked into that yet because I have enough medicine to cover the next 90 days.
Question that I still need answered:
If I get a temporary contract job during my unemployment period, am I able to pause my benefits for the duration of that contract and extend the time frame that I receive benefits? Or do I lose my benefits entirely?
Step 2: Filing
First action: took a deep breath.
It was really easy to set up an account.
The state already knew who my last employer was, but they didn’t have any information about my income. I needed to know my gross pay each week to complete the application. I don’t know that; I never looked at paycheck stubs unless the direct deposit amount changed. I don’t have access to paystubs anymore.
I have a few from earlier this year when I was on medical leave, and one of those had my gross pay to date so I used that to calculate the figure. But to find that, I had to open every piece of mail that I’ve received in the last year. Usually, I just add that mail that looks like it may eventually be important to the pile in the drawer in my office cabinet because I get all communications through email. I purge it all every January. But I also had to sort through all of my displacement paperwork from Wells Fargo that’s been sitting on top of that. When I took all that out to the recycling bin, the pile weighed almost as much as my obese pug.
It would have been nice if Missouri was able to pull my 2025 filing from their tax database to populate my monthly gross income because if it wasn’t for that medical leave, I wouldn’t have a paystub to reference. I’d have to call corporate, and that would have delayed my ability to file for unemployment.
The form was hard to fill out because I struggled to differentiate what was a required field and what wasn’t. It didn’t customize for your yes/no answers.
Unemployment benefits include a state-assisted job search. I think that’s really cool; I wasn’t expecting that. But I had to set up that job search in order to complete my application…and that was really irritating. You put a job title in there, like “public relations specialist,” and it wants you to define how much time you’ve spent in that role in months and years. I didn’t add anything more than that one job title because I was irritated. I assume I can go back in and update later but I have no idea.
Step 3: Approval
I will need to wait a week to receive a letter in the mail confirming if my application was approved and how much I will receive. I was given an estimate, which I was able to use to calculate the hourly wage that I still need and the number of hours that I need to break even. And I can still do it with minimum wage. However: my income for those part-time jobs or contract jobs will be reported each week, and the money received will be deducted from the weekly unemployment pay. I need to see how that works out.
I also have a full year of benefits, which I was not expecting. I didn’t know what to expect, but that was an exciting surprise.
What I’ll need to do to keep my benefits:
I have to log on every week, by midnight on Saturday, to request payment for the following week.
I will also have to report at least 3 job search activities: submitting a resume, an interview, attending a job fair, etc.
And with a part-time job, I will need to record how many hours I worked that week (Sunday – Saturday) so they can deduct that amount from my weekly benefit. The deduction is either $20 or 20% of the weekly benefit amount, whichever is more than the gross pay from that part-time job.
Unemployment benefits are still taxed in Missouri, so I opted to have the federal tax deducted from my benefit. However, it didn’t give me the option to deduct my state tax – which seems odd.
Now that I’m done…
I feel really good about this.
It’s not going to be easy. But I’m still thankful because I’ve never had an unemployment benefit before. It’s kind of nice to know that my taxes go to something.
Because of my savings from my last income, I’ve been able to pay off debt that I’ve had since my 20s. And without that debt, I only need to make minimum wage for 60 hours/week - which is what I was working at my last job. This unemployment situation that has forced me to pay off that debt feels like I’m healing scars.
And no, I won’t be able to vacation in France or Florida, or even Fulton, MO - but does that matter?
I’ve got my mom, my kid, my brother, my health. A house. My family. My friends. And the community that I’ve built from others in the same situation, sharing the same experience and jumping the same hurdles.
I’m still going to find a job and get a steady income without needing government assistance. And if it takes longer than a year, then I’ve still got back-up benefits like food stamps, potentially disability, and the Health Insurance Marketplace.
