Methodology & Data Sources
Every number on this site derives from a single federal source: U.S. Department of Labor, Significant Provisions of State UI Laws (January 2026), effective January 1, 2026, published by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Unemployment Insurance. Pages are regenerated from that dataset; nothing is hand-edited.
What the calculators do — and don't
The weekly-benefit estimator applies your state's published formula (e.g., "1/26 of high-quarter wages") to the earnings you enter, then clamps the result between the state's published minimum and maximum. Where a state uses statutory tables or schedules that can't be computed from simple inputs (Alaska, Virginia, West Virginia, North Dakota), we show the state's range instead of pretending to a precision we don't have. Where an estimate requires an assumption (e.g., deriving an average weekly wage from annual earnings), the assumption is disclosed on the page.
The partial-benefit calculator applies the state's earnings disregard to a week of part-time work. States with rules that don't reduce to a formula are labeled as such.
What these estimates are not
They are not eligibility determinations. Monetary eligibility is only half of a claim — you must also be separated through no fault of your own and be able, available, and searching for work, all of which the state agency assesses. Dependents' allowances, alternate base periods, waiting weeks, and pension or severance offsets can change your actual amount. File with your state via unemployment.gov.
SNAP data
The SNAP section derives from two federal sources and nothing else: the USDA Food and Nutrition Administration's FY2026 Cost-of-Living Adjustments memo (allotments, deductions, income standards and asset limits, effective October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026) and the Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility state chart (each state's gross income percentage and asset-limit treatment).
Every income threshold on the site is computed from the federal poverty guidelines rather than transcribed, then checked against USDA's own published tables at 100%, 130% and 165% of poverty for all three regions — 81 figures in total. If a future edition changes and our guideline figures go stale, the build fails rather than publishing thresholds that are quietly wrong.
The benefit estimator reproduces USDA's published worked example exactly. What it deliberately does not model: Standard Utility Allowances (most states require a fixed allowance instead of actual utility bills), work requirements and non-citizen rules (both changed under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, and USDA's own guidance is still being updated), student eligibility, and the homeless shelter deduction. Puerto Rico does not operate SNAP at all and is documented separately.
Update cadence
The DOL publishes the unemployment dataset biannually (January and July editions). USDA reissues the SNAP COLA memo each August, effective the following October 1, and revises the BBCE chart on no fixed schedule. We track new editions and republish when the data changes; the effective date shown on every page is the dataset's, not ours. Data updates are a deliberate manual step — wrong benefit figures are worse than stale ones, so nothing here auto-updates itself.