If you’re offered a job while getting SC unemployment benefits, you could get cut off
South Carolina continues to face a historic workforce shortage, with more than 100,000 jobs unfilled, so the state is utilizing every new avenue possible to get, and force, people to return to work.
In the Grand Strand, the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce has scrambled for weeks to help struggling businesses find necessary workers. The shortage isn’t new, but this year it has been especially bad.
This week, the chamber reminded employers that they can report to the state Department of Employment and Workforce instances of people turning down job offers, for new employment or after a temporary layoff. If the person who received the offer was receiving unemployment insurance, they risk losing their weekly checks from the state or federal government.
“If you have offered an individual a job and they refused, it is important for you to report the incident to DEW,” the state labor department said in a statement on its website.
These rules regarding unemployment eligibility go beyond just Myrtle Beach. Anyone around the state who has turned down a job offer while on unemployment risks losing their benefits.
The state already had a system before the pandemic for employers to report people who turned down suitable work “without good cause.”
“If it’s reviewed and found that a suitable job was offered by mail, email or text message and was refused, a claimant will no longer be found eligible to receive benefits,” state workforce department spokeswoman Heather Biance said in an email.
In Myrtle Beach, where it’s hard to find a business without a “We’re Hiring” sign, at least one business has already experienced people interview for jobs only for the candidates to “disappear” when it came time to fill out their employment paperwork.
That’s what happened at the new fine dining restaurant Abundance in Myrtle Beach’s Grande Dunes neighborhood. Owner William Tyson said he had extended job offers to six people only for them to never show up for work. He opened the restaurant Wednesday still short several waitstaff and a dishwasher.
“It’s a difficult, just crazy, problem,” Tyson said.
The risk of losing unemployment doesn’t just affect people who receive offers for new jobs. The state workforce department introduced its Recall Taskforce last May to help employers get people they laid off back to their old jobs. People who were laid off and later received offers for their old jobs as the state reopened, if reported, could lose their weekly unemployment checks.
The state and federal government do allow in certain circumstances for people to turn down suitable work and stay on unemployment.
Here are the exceptions.
- You were diagnosed with COVID-19 or are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and seeking a medical diagnosis.
- A member of your household has been diagnosed with COVID-19.
- You are caring for a family member or household member who has been diagnosed with COVID-19.
- You must care for a child or other person in your household for whom you have primary caregiving responsibility because his or her school or care facility is closed because of the COVID-19 public health emergency, preventing you from working.
- You can’t reach your place of employment because of a government-ordered COVID-19 quarantine.
- You can’t reach your place of employment because your health care provider advised you to self-quarantine due to COVID-19.
- You were scheduled to start working and you do not have a job or can’t reach the job as a direct result of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
- You have become the breadwinner or major support for a household because the head of the household has died as a direct result of COVID-19.
- You had to quit your job as a direct result of COVID-19.
- Your place of employment is closed as a direct result of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
- You work as an independent contractor and the COVID-19 public health emergency has severely limited your ability to continue performing your customary work activities, forcing you to suspend such activities.
More than a year into the pandemic, some people have expressed worry about returning to work for fear of exposure to the coronavirus. As of Thursday, only 41% of the state’s population had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and just under one-third of residents were fully vaccinated.
However, that’s not enough to stay on unemployment anymore.
“A claimant cannot draw benefits under any state or federal program if they are not working because of a generalized fear of contracting COVID-19,” Biance said in an email.
Stripping people of their unemployment benefits isn’t the only way the state has tried to get people to return to work.
State workforce department reinstated on April 18 the requirement that people must be actively searching for work to continue receiving unemployment benefits.
This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "If you’re offered a job while getting SC unemployment benefits, you could get cut off."
