Are you eligible for unemployment benefits in Arizona?

The Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES) treats a layoff from a plant closing, a reduction in force, or lack of work as unemployment through no fault of your own. If you left for any other reason, DES reviews your case and decides under Arizona's statutes, its Administrative Code, and federal law where it applies.

The Arizona base period, with dated examples

Your base period is the first 4 of the last 5 completed calendar quarters before your benefit year starts. The quarters run January 1 to March 31, April 1 to June 30, July 1 to September 30, and October 1 to December 31. Wages in the fifth quarter, which DES calls the lag quarter, do not count, and neither do wages from before the 12-month base period.

Your benefit year usually starts on the Sunday of the week you file. Here is how the dates fall for one claim:

Your Monetary Determination lists your base-period quarters and the wages in each. The benefit year ends 365 days after it starts. If a new benefit year overlaps your last one, the law uses the 4 completed quarters right after your previous base period instead.

If every wage on the Monetary Determination is correct and you still fall short, DES says to wait until the next calendar quarter begins and then file a new claim. That helps only if you worked after the base period it lists.

If you worked in another state too, or live in Arizona with wages from 2 or more other states, you can combine them: file in any state where you worked, on that state's wages alone or on all of them. If all your base-period work was in another state, you must file there. Wages from work you were not authorized to do in the United States cannot be used.

An alternate base period after a work injury

If temporary total disability payments under workers' compensation, or a similar federal law, left you unable to qualify on the regular base period, the law moves your base period back to before the disability. It becomes the first 4 of the last 5 completed quarters before the week the disability began. For a disability that began on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, that week began Sunday, March 8, 2026, so the alternate base period runs October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025.

All of these must be true:

• You cannot qualify on the regular base period, and the earlier wages were never used for another claim.
• You file within 2 years after the disability began.
• You file no later than the fourth calendar week of unemployment after the disability ends. DES's handbook words this as within 4 weeks of the last week workers' compensation paid you.
• You meet the regular eligibility rules and tried to return to the job where the disability occurred.

The wage tests for claims filed in 2026

You pass on either test. Both count wages for insured work, which DES describes as work for an employer who paid Arizona unemployment tax.

Option 1. Your best-paid quarter must reach 390 times the Arizona minimum wage in effect when you file, and your whole base period must total at least one and a half times that quarter. DES puts the second part as earning at least half the high quarter across the other 3 quarters combined; its example is $6,000 in the high quarter and $3,000 in the rest.

With the minimum wage at $15.15 from January 1, 2026, the numbers work out like this:

The minimum wage rises every January 1 with the cost of living, so this floor moves with it.

Option 2. DES asks for at least $8,000 in total wages across at least 2 base-period quarters, with at least $7,987.50 in one of them. The statute states it as one quarter large enough for the maximum weekly amount and a total at least equal to the taxable wage limit, which is $8,000 from 2023 on.

Your weekly amount is 4% of your best quarter's wages, up to $320. How much unemployment pays works through the amount, and how a week with part-time earnings is paid.

Reasons for leaving a job that can stop a claim

If DES disqualifies you, it sends a written notice with the reason. These are the grounds in the law's own terms.

Quitting

If you left voluntarily without good cause in connection with the employment, you are disqualified from that week until you have earned 5 times your weekly benefit amount, on top of the waiting week. Leaving over transportation is disqualifying unless your travel was beyond the normal practice in your occupation and past practice, or you had compelling personal circumstances. The law's examples of those, which are not a complete list:

• Over 30 miles from home to work
• More than an hour and a half to reach work
• A spouse or unemancipated minor leaving to go with a spouse or parent in the armed services who is transferred on official orders

DES's rule judges good cause by asking what a reasonable worker would have done in the same circumstances, looking at your reasons for leaving and whether they justify it. Leaving work that is legally substandard, or that meets legal standards but puts your health or safety at undue risk, is not disqualifying. Good cause is generally not shown unless you first tried to keep the job by giving it a fair trial, trying to fix the conditions, or asking for a leave of absence when one was needed to resolve a personal difficulty. You need not take those steps if they were impracticable or impossible, or would obviously not have worked.

The rule also counts it as leaving in connection with the employment, not for personal reasons, when your employer changed the terms or conditions of the job in a way that affected your personal affairs. DES cannot disqualify you for leaving because of a documented case of domestic violence.

Being fired

A discharge for wilful or negligent misconduct connected with the employment carries the same 5-times rule. Misconduct means an act or omission that materially breaches your duties to the employer or harms its material interest. The law's list, which is not complete, covers:

• Attendance: absence without notice or good cause, repeated absence after warnings, not returning from leave without permission, and repeated lateness without good cause
• Repeated intoxication at work or when reporting to work, and failing or refusing an employer's drug or alcohol impairment test
• Refusing reasonable duties or instructions, insubordination, repeated abusive language, assault or repeated fighting, and destroying the employer's property
• Dishonesty, falsified applications or time records, and theft
• Admitting or being convicted of a crime tied to the job or the employer's interest, unless the employer knew of it when you were hired
• Breaking a reasonable work or safety rule without good cause, and violence or unlawful conduct during a strike, lockout, or picketing

DES weighs your earlier work history with the same employer. If you are later convicted or acquitted of a felony over the act you were fired for, the claim is reconsidered after a hearing once an interested party gives notice. If your employer required a COVID-19 vaccine or booster shot and fired you for not getting it, DES cannot disqualify you for that.

Turning down work and other grounds

• Refusing suitable work. Failing without cause to apply for suitable work when directed, to seek work, to accept a suitable offer, or to return to your usual self-employment disqualifies you until you earn 8 times your weekly amount. In your first 4 weeks, DES judges suitability on the risk to your health, safety, and morals, your fitness and training, your experience and past earnings, how long you have been out of work, local prospects in your usual occupation, and distance; after that, any offer paying 120% of your weekly amount counts as suitable. A job is never suitable if it is open because of a strike or lockout, pays or treats you substantially worse than similar local work, or requires joining a company union or leaving a real one. An offer withdrawn because you failed a pre-hire drug test, or refused one without good cause, counts as a refusal.
• A labor dispute at your workplace. You are disqualified for weeks your unemployment is due to a strike, lockout, or labor dispute there, unless you are not taking part in, financing, or directly interested in it, or you belong to no grade or class of workers who are. It does not apply when the dispute was caused by the employer breaking an agreement or a law on hours, wages, or conditions.
• A customary shutdown. A customary shutdown of all operations but maintenance, happening no more than once a calendar year and lasting no more than 4 consecutive weeks, with your job available again afterward, disqualifies you for the week you become unemployed and up to 3 weeks after.
• Other weeks the law excludes. Any week you receive or are seeking benefits from another state or the federal government, unless that agency finally rules you out; any week you are incarcerated; and, if within the 24 months before a claim you knowingly made a false statement or hid a material fact to get benefits, the week of that claim and up to 51 weeks after it, which DES's handbook puts as up to 52 weeks.
• Seasonal lodging and sports. Hotel, motel, RV park, and dude ranch workers laid off in a seasonal slowdown may not qualify, if the employer meets the state's criteria, applies for that classification each year, and told them in writing when they were hired. Professional athletes are not paid between seasons when they have a reasonable assurance of playing the next one.

Being able and available each week

Each week you claim, you must be mentally and physically able to work at a job your experience, education, or training fits, and you are not eligible while sick. You must be available: ready to take full-time work and report when the employer requires, with the transportation, clothing, licenses, and tools the work needs, and with childcare or other home duties no barrier to going back to work promptly.

The full-time part has an exception in DES's rules for an established disability that limits you to part-time work, backed by medical evidence. When a disability meets an unemployment claim sets out the conditions.

The law adds a work search on at least 4 days of the week, with at least 1 job contact a day on 4 different days. DES states it as at least 4 contacts on 4 different days, and may check your records for up to 2 years. Filing weekly claims covers what counts. A few rules shift for particular claimants:

• Temporarily laid off, you still search while you wait for recall; seasonal workers look for other work in the off-season.
• Union members who get work through the union stay registered and on its out-of-work list. If the union allows a personal search, they also apply directly with employers; if not, they contact the union on at least 4 different days.
• Weekend National Guard or reserve drill, no more than one weekend a month, does not make you unavailable.
• Training approved by DES or under the federal Trade Act lifts the availability, work search, and job refusal rules for those weeks.
• Living outside the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands can make you ineligible. The handbook says it does when you also have no access to an employment office and cannot take immediate work in the United States.

How DES decides when your employer disputes why the job ended

1. When you file, DES tells your last employer the reason you gave for leaving. The employer can protest within 10 business days of that notice.
2. DES must make reasonable efforts to get the facts, and you must give it enough documents or information to decide. If the employer documents that you resigned or abandoned the job, the burden of documenting your eligibility shifts to you. The employer's proof can be its own written or spoken statement, such as an attestation that you resigned verbally, or failed to report, while work was available.
3. If DES schedules a fact-finding interview, it gives you at least 5 calendar days' written notice. Miss it and you are ineligible for that week until you report, unless you report within 3 work days or by the end of that week, whichever comes first, or you had good cause such as illness, no transportation, or a job interview or work.
4. A deputy decides and sends the determination and its reasons to you and to the employer, by the notification method you chose in CACTUS. Either side can appeal. Appeal as soon as you can: the statute allows 7 calendar days after the notice is delivered or 15 after it is mailed, while DES's pages say 15 days from the date of the determination. Appeals and overpayments covers how.
5. If an appeal tribunal or the Appeals Board upholds a decision allowing benefits, DES pays them even if the employer appeals again.

Keep filing weekly claims while the decision is pending and after you appeal. If a denial is later reversed, DES pays only the weeks you filed.

Requalifying after a disqualification

A quit or misconduct disqualification lasts until you have earned 5 times your weekly benefit amount in later work; a refusal of suitable work or failing to seek work, until you have earned 8 times it. At the $320 maximum, that is $1,600 of later wages after a quit or firing and $2,560 after a refusal.

The handbook adds a trap on the work search. If you made contacts on fewer than 4 days in a week, you are offered the chance to skip filing that week. Filing it anyway without meeting the rule disqualifies you until you return to work, earn 8 times your weekly amount, and become unemployed again through no fault of your own.

To start a second benefit year after the first, you must have worked since the first one began and earned at least 8 times the new weekly amount, and DES can ask for proof within 30 days.

School staff between terms

Benefits based on work for a school or college are not paid for weeks between academic years or terms when you worked the first one and have a reasonable assurance of work in the next. How that applies depends on the job:

• Teachers, researchers, and principal administrators. No benefits between years or terms, or during paid sabbatical, when you have a contract or reasonable assurance of such work at any school for the next one.
• Every other school job. The same rule, with one exception: if you are then not offered the work, you are owed back payments for each week you filed a timely claim and were denied only for this reason. The back payment covers only weeks you claimed on time.
• Vacations and holiday recesses. No benefits for weeks in an established vacation or recess when you worked just before it and have a reasonable assurance of work just after.
• More than one school employer. You can be paid on wages from an employer that gave you no contract or assurance, but not from one that did.

The same rules cover school bus contractors, charter schools, and contract educational providers, the private for-profit companies the state Department of Education approves to give special education to kindergarten through grade 12 pupils.