Can an Employee Collect Unemployment After Giving Two Weeks Notice?

Can employees collect unemployment after they have given their notice to quit? The answer to that question depends on the employer’s conduct. On January 15, 2009, the Utah Court of Appeals in Hughes General Contractors v. DWS held that an employee was eligible to receive unemployment benefits, even though the employee had given his employer two-weeks notice of his intent to quit, because the employer elected to consider the resignation effective immediately and did not pay the employee for the two week notice period. In its decision, the Court relied on rule 994-405-204 of the Utah Administrative Code, which provides that “[i]f a claimant notifies the employer of an intent to leave work on a definite date, and the employer ends the employment relationship prior to that date, the separation is a discharge unless the claimant is paid through the resignation date.”

The employer argued that the decision was contrary to the purposes of the Unemployment Act and that it should be allowed to cure by simply paying the employee for the two-week notice period. Although the Court recognized that the award could appear “disproportionate to the amount of time during which the claimant was involuntarily unemployed,” it rejected the employer’s arguments and upheld the Workforce Appeals Board’s conclusion that the employee was terminated without just cause and was therefore eligible for benefits. The bottom line is that if an employee submits his or her notice of resignation and the employer elects to treat the resignation as immediate, the employer must pay the employee the amount of wages he or she would have earned during the notice period, or the employee may be eligible for unemployment