How long do Louisiana unemployment benefits last?

Louisiana does not pay the same number of weeks year in, year out. The ceiling rises and falls with the state's unemployment rate, so a claim filed this month and one filed next year can run for different lengths.

How many weeks your claim pays

For a claim filed on or after January 5, 2025, the total you can draw is 12 to 20 times your weekly benefit amount, based on the average of the 3 most recently published seasonally adjusted state unemployment rates.

That average lands the claim on one step of this table.

Louisiana Works has to publish the maximum a claimant can be eligible for on its website twice a year, so check the agency's current figure rather than a number you read months ago.

Advice that still quotes 26 weeks is describing the fixed rule that applied to claims filed before January 5, 2025. A benefit year lasts 12 months, so no claim on that older rule is still being paid.

Why the number keeps changing

A Louisiana claim carries a ceiling on its weeks and a ceiling on its weekly payment, and the pair move on separate clocks.

The weeks come from the unemployment rate table above, which Louisiana Works restates twice a year. The maximum weekly payment comes from the balance of the state unemployment trust fund, projected each September for the calendar year ahead. Neither figure tells you where the other one landed, and how much unemployment pays covers the weekly side.

Severance can cut your weeks

If a base period employer paid you severance that, spread over the weeks it covers, matches or beats your weekly benefit amount, your entitlement drops by one week for every week of severance pay. It cannot be cut below one week.

Your benefit year, and the new claim after it

A benefit year is the 12-month period that starts on the Sunday of the week you filed. You cannot file a new claim until that period ends, even if your weeks ran out months earlier.

So a claim whose weeks run out in the spring does not become a fresh claim in the summer. The next claim starts after the benefit year closes, and it is filed the same way as the first one, on how to file for unemployment.

When the weeks run out

If your regular benefits end while you are enrolled in and attending school or an approved training program, you may qualify for Additional Benefits, worth up to 8 more weeks. The training has to be under way when the regular claim ends, not started after the last payment.

Nothing about them is automatic. Once the regular claim is exhausted you have to file a new claim and state on it that you are enrolled in and attending school or an approved training program, then carry on filing a weekly claim every week. You may be asked for more detail about the course. The money does not change: Additional Benefits pay the weekly benefit amount your regular claim paid.

This is the one new claim you do not wait to file. The wait described above governs the fresh regular claim that follows a benefit year; the instruction for Additional Benefits is to file as soon as the regular claim is exhausted.

Keep the job search going either way. Finding work in Louisiana has the state job bank and the local offices.