IDES Requesting Reimbursement of Payments
I work HR at a Chicago-area University. When we closed the campus in March 2020, several of our student employees were unable to work their on campus jobs. Some of them filed for unemployment just to see what would happen and actually received payments from IDES, including the $600 stimulus funds even though student employees are not eligible for unemployment. IDES did not wait for the University’s response of ineligibility before processing the payments. They just sent payments. Now, a year later, IDES is sending these students notices of overpayment.
What options do these students have? Most cannot afford to repay this amount, sometimes to the amount of more than $10,000. Any advice that I can pass onto these students would be appreciated.
Terry Says
Well, according to Federal law, Illinois is NOT REQUIRED to claw back unemployment payments it made in error. And they are starting to give waivers to those who protest. The only thing the state can do is withhold from future unemployment payments, or from state tax refunds. I would tell them to sit tight until the law is clarified and some decisions are made in the coming months. I very much doubt the state is going to file lawsuits against unemployment people who cannot repay the state’s mistaken payments. So tell the students to relax and put this in the back of their mind for now.
