The unemployment insurance program provides benefits in the form of payments to help people meet their expenses until they find another job. To get payments, you must qualify for benefits.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) determines unemployment eligibility. IDES also gives out the benefits. You can learn more about the IDES on their website.

To qualify, you must be involuntarily unemployed. This means:

• You didn't quit unless you had a good reason to quit, and
• You weren't fired for "misconduct." 

To get unemployment benefits, you must also have worked a certain period of time, and you must be:

• able to work,
• available for work, and
• seeking work. 

If you were fired or laid off 

If your employer fired you or laid you off, IDES will decide whether you were fired for “misconduct.” If you were fired for misconduct, you will not get unemployment insurance. In a nutshell, misconduct is an employee’s deliberate violation of a reasonable employer rule; the law is more complicated, but that is the essence. 

Whether you were fired for misconduct is a different question from whether the employer had a good reason to fire you. For example, if you were not able to do the job even though you tried, the employer had a good reason to fire you but you did not commit misconduct because you tried your best to do the job. Even if the employer had a good reason to fire you, you should be eligible for benefits if IDES decides you did not commit misconduct

IDES does not determine whether your employer fired you legally. If IDES says you weren't fired for misconduct, this does not mean it was illegal for the employer to fire you.

Illinois is considered an "at will" employment state. This means that, if your employer wants to fire you, they can. Illinois courts have stated an employer can fire an at will employee for "a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all." If the employer fires you for “bad reasons” – for unfair reasons or no reason at all – that is not usually unlawful. The unemployment insurance system is not designed to help people get their jobs back.

There are some exceptions to this general rule in Illinois that an employer does not need a good reason to fire someone. There are laws that protect people from being fired for certain reasons. For example, an employer cannot fire someone because of their race or religion, or because they tried to organize a union. If you are part of a union, your union contract may give you protections against being fired. 

If you feel that you were wrongfully fired, you can speak to an employment lawyer about whether your employer acted legally. For more information about unlawful employment discrimination, visit the Illinois Department of Human Rights website. To find available services and resources, try our Get Legal Help tool.

If you quit your job

It can be hard to win an unemployment insurance case if you quit your job, but it is not impossible. If you quit your job, in general you must have quit because of something that the employer did that would have caused a reasonable person to quit. An example is if the employer reduced your pay or doubled your workload in a way that made it impossible for you to do your work. You must have tried to work things out with the employer.