Official Site of The State of New Jersey
How to certify for (claim) Unemployment Insurance benefits by telephone
If you cannot claim your benefits online, you may claim them by telephone. Please be advised that a call waiting signal could interfere with your call and provide incorrect data to our computer system. Therefore, you should turn off the call waiting feature before you phone to claim benefits. Also, using a cell phone is not recommended because interference or loss of signal may result in incorrect data being transmitted to our computer system.
When you certify for, or claim, your Unemployment Insurance benefits, you're confirming to us that you met all the eligibility requirements for that week.
If you choose to certify by phone, you'll do so every two weeks, as long as you're out of work and eligible for benefits.
It is important to certify for, or claim, benefits every week you are unemployed, even if we notify you of a problem with your application. If the problem prevents benefits from being paid right away, or if you are denied benefits and are appealing that decision, you must still certify for benefits. If you are eventually found to be eligible for benefits, or you win your appeal, you will be paid those benefits at a later date. If you do not certify for benefits, retroactive payments will not be made.
Your claim is dated the Sunday of the week in which you first applied for Unemployment Insurance benefits. The first time you certify for, or claim, benefits will be on a Wednesday, 17 days after the date of your claim (which is not necessarily the day you actually applied). To get paid, you must certify for benefits for each week you were eligible to receive them. You can only certify for benefits after that week has passed. Unemployment Insurance weeks start on Sunday and end at midnight on Saturday.
You will be assigned a Wednesday to call for the first time. After that, you will call on a Monday or Tuesday, every two weeks. It is your responsibility to claim your weekly benefits on a timely basis. Click here for a list of telephone numbers to be used when calling to claim your weekly benefits.
The first time you certify for benefits, you will enter your Social Security number and create a four-digit personal identification number (PIN). Be sure to create a PIN you will remember because you will need this PIN when you claim your weekly benefits in the future.
Click here for a list of phone numbers to call to certify for, or claim, Unemployment Insurance benefits.
After you have certified for benefits for the first time (on a Wednesday), you will call on a Monday or Tuesday thereafter, every two weeks.
You must certify for, or claim, benefits according to the last digit of your Social Security number.
- If your Social Security number ends in an ODD number (1, 3, 5, 7, and 9), call on MONDAY.
- If your Social Security number ends in an EVEN number (2, 4, 6, 8, 0), call on TUESDAY.
If you don't claim your benefits on the assigned day, you can call on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday of the same week. You can't claim benefits by phone on Saturday or Sunday.
