Who is eligible for unemployment in South Carolina?

DEW decides eligibility only after you file, and filing is the only way to get that decision. The tests below count covered wages, meaning pay from employers who pay into South Carolina's UI Trust Fund, and if DEW's notice leaves out wages you earned, the filing guide explains how to dispute them.

The 3 wage tests

The law sets 3 wage requirements, and your base period has to pass all of them.

DEW's handbook also says you must have worked in at least 2 of the base-period quarters. Its own worked example has quarters of $7,400, $8,000, $6,800, and $7,800. The best quarter, $8,000, clears $1,092; the $30,000 total clears $4,455; and $30,000 is well over 1.5 times $8,000, which is $12,000. That claimant passes all 3.

Which quarters count: your base period

DEW counts wages by calendar quarter: January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December. Your standard base period is the first 4 of the last 5 completed quarters before your claim begins.

If the standard base period is short, the law uses an alternate base period: the 4 quarters completed most recently before the claim, if they qualify you and were not used for an earlier claim. DEW picks the base period when it reviews your claim.

A dated example: for a claim filed in November 2026, the last 5 completed quarters run from July 1, 2025, to September 30, 2026. The standard base period is July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. Only if those wages fall short does DEW try the alternate base period, October 1, 2025, to September 30, 2026. Wages that set up one claim cannot be used again to qualify for a later benefit year.

If you quit

For a quit or a firing, the law looks at your most recent bona fide employer, the job you separated from. Later work that paid less than 8 times your weekly benefit amount does not replace that job as the one the law judges. If DEW finds you left that work voluntarily without good cause, you are ineligible until you get a new job in covered employment and earn at least 8 times your weekly benefit amount there. The handbook counts as quitting a verbal or written resignation, failing to act when you should know that will cost you the job, failing to take reasonable steps to keep it, not returning from an approved leave of absence, and filing for unemployment while on one.

The law carves out these separations from the quit rule. Each is eligible for benefits and for waiting week credit, except Trade Act training, where the law says only that you cannot be denied benefits for the quit:

• Domestic abuse. You left or were fired because of circumstances directly resulting from domestic abuse, and you reasonably fear more abuse at or on the way to work, need to move to avoid it, or reasonably believe leaving is necessary for your or your family's safety. DEW must ask for documentation, such as police or court records, or a statement from a shelter worker, attorney, member of the clergy, or medical or other professional you sought help from, and keeps it confidential unless you consent in writing.
• Your own illness or disability. DEW finds, from the information available, that it was medically necessary for you to stop working or change occupations.
• A family member's illness or disability. The family member is your spouse, a parent, or a dependent child, and the illness or disability is verified and needs care for longer than your employer will give paid or unpaid leave. Disability here covers mental and physical, permanent and temporary, and partial and total.
• A spouse's job in another city or state. Your spouse was transferred or hired elsewhere, the family has to move there, and the new home is beyond commuting distance, which DEW's regulations set at more than 50 miles from your new address to your old workplace.
• A military spouse's reassignment. You left to move because your spouse was reassigned from one military assignment to another, and you left within 15 days of the scheduled move.
• Approved Trade Act training. You left work that was not suitable employment to enter training approved under the Trade Act of 1974.

If you were fired

The law grades a firing by its cause, and each grade cuts benefits differently. The penalty weeks come off your claim's total, so what can leave you with fewer weeks shows what a penalty leaves.

Misconduct is limited to wilful and wanton disregard of the employer's interests: deliberately breaking standards the employer has a right to expect, or carelessness so serious or repeated that it shows the same culpability. No misconduct finding may be made for a firing that resulted from an extreme hardship, emergency, sickness, or other extraordinary circumstance, and substandard work caused by inefficiency, inability, or incapacity cannot support either penalty.

Gross misconduct means one of these: wilful or reckless damage to employer property of more than $50; drinking or being under the influence of alcohol on employer property against a written company policy; theft of items worth more than $50; breaking state or federal drug and alcohol testing rules on the job, including those for transportation and other safety-sensitive work; criminal assault or battery of a coworker or customer; criminal abuse of a patient or child in your care; insubordination, meaning wilful refusal of a lawful, reasonable order tied to your written job description; or wilful neglect of a duty in that job description.

The drug use penalty needs a company policy against illegal drug use, communicated to you, that could lead to firing. On top of that, you refused a test or gave an adulterated specimen, or you tested positive for illegal drugs or for legal drugs used without a prescription, on a sample an authorized person collected, a certified laboratory tested, and an approved method confirmed. An admission you made under your employer's written self-report policy, before it asked you to test, cannot be used.

Other reasons DEW can deny a claim

• Refusing suitable work. Without good cause, failing to apply for suitable work when DEW or the employment office sends you, turning down a suitable offer, or not returning to your usual self-employment when DEW directs, makes you ineligible until you work again and earn 8 times your weekly benefit amount. Testing positive on a prospective employer's drug test counts as refusing the offer.
• Voluntary retirement. You stay ineligible until you show new employment paying at least 8 times your weekly benefit amount.
• A labor dispute. You are ineligible for any week your unemployment is directly due to a labor dispute in active progress where you last worked, unless you show DEW both that you are not taking part in, funding, or directly interested in it, and that you are not in a grade or class of workers at that site any of whom are. A separate branch of work run in its own department counts as its own site.
• Benefits from somewhere else. No week is paid while you receive or seek unemployment from another state or the federal government, unless that agency finally denies you.
• Immigration status when you did the work. Wages count only if, when you earned them, you were a lawful permanent resident, lawfully present to do that work, or permanently residing in the United States under color of law. DEW asks every applicant the same status questions and needs a preponderance of the evidence to deny on this ground.

Suitability is judged for you personally: DEW weighs risk to your health and safety, your fitness, training, experience, and past pay, how long you have been out of work, local prospects, and the distance from home. Under DEW's regulations, suitable work in your first 8 weeks of benefits includes a job paying 90% of what your most recent bona fide employer paid, and after more than 8 weeks one paying 75%, and you never have to accept a cut that takes the pay below minimum wage. A job is never suitable if it is open because of a strike or lockout, pays or treats you substantially worse than similar local work, or requires you to join a company union or quit or stay out of a bona fide labor organization.

Able, available, and looking for work

Each week you claim, you must be able to work and available for work in your usual occupation or another one your training or experience qualifies you for, where you earned your base-period wages or, if you moved, where suitable work can reasonably be expected. The handbook says available means you could start work tomorrow, and you need transportation and child care in place. While you are ill, injured, out of town, or on vacation, you are not eligible until you can work again.

• Part-time workers. If 51% or more of the weeks you worked in your base period were part-time, DEW cannot deny you only because you are looking for part-time work, as long as you are available for a number of hours a week comparable to your past part-time work.
• Training. While you are in training DEW has approved, you cannot be denied under the availability, work search, or refusal of work rules.
• Jury duty or a subpoena. You cannot be denied for a week you are required by law to appear in court as a juror or witness, though any juror per diem is taken off that week's benefit.
• Temporary agency workers. When an assignment ends, you must show you told the agency, kept in weekly contact with it, and were not offered another assignment you are fit for.

The weekly work search, at least 2 job searches a week in SC Works Online Services, is part of staying eligible; the weekly certification guide covers how it works.

When your employer disputes your claim

Your last or separating employer, and any employer whose account the claim could affect, can answer DEW's notice of your claim and can appeal DEW's decision. The law gives an employer 10 calendar days to respond: from the postmark on a mailed notice, moving to the next business day when the 10th day falls on a weekend or state holiday, or from the day an emailed notice is sent.

• If DEW's first decision found you eligible, the handbook says DEW keeps paying you while the employer's appeal is pending.
• If you were denied for any reason and are waiting on your own appeal, DEW says payments cannot begin or resume until the appeal decision.
• Either way, keep filing your weekly claims during the appeal. DEW warns that weeks you do not claim may be lost even if you win.

An employer, its officer or agent, or anyone else who knowingly makes a false statement, or hides a material fact, to stop or cut benefits owed to you faces a fine of $50 to $250 or up to 30 days in jail for each offense. And no agreement you sign to give up your right to benefits is valid. To challenge a decision yourself, see South Carolina's appeal steps.

School staff between terms

Teachers, researchers, and principal administrators at a school or college are not paid benefits for weeks between academic years or terms, or during a paid sabbatical in their contract, if they have a contract or reasonable assurance of doing that work in both years or terms. Workers in any other role at a public, private, or nonprofit school or college are not paid on their school wages between years or terms if they worked the first and have reasonable assurance of working the second.

The same bars cover an established vacation or holiday recess when you worked right before it and have reasonable assurance of working right after. Reasonable assurance is a written, verbal, or implied agreement that you will do the same kind of work in the next year or term. The bars also reach school work done through an educational service agency, or for a private contractor serving a school if the contractor tells DEW you were separated.

• If you work in one of those other roles, were denied under this rule, and then were not offered the work for the next year or term, you get retroactive pay for each week you filed a timely claim and were denied only for this reason. That is a reason to keep filing through the break.
• The handbook says you may still qualify if you have enough other wages to set up a claim without your school wages.

Qualifying again for a new benefit year

The statute says that if you received benefits in one benefit year, you cannot be paid in the next until, after the earlier benefit year began, you did insured work and earned at least 8 times your previous weekly benefit amount from a single employer.

DEW's own pages word it differently. The Applying for Benefits page says the wages must come from a new employer that pays into the UI Trust Fund, that the layoff must be through no fault of your own, and that you reapply only after your benefit year ends. The handbook's benefit year section names no employer at all, while its double dipping passage matches the statute. The handbook itself says the statute controls wherever the handbook and the statute conflict. If your wages meet the statute but not a DEW page's wording, file and let DEW decide.

If you use up your claim total before the benefit year ends, you wait for the year to end before filing a new claim. If you were disqualified, you wait out the disqualification and then reopen the claim or file a new one in MyBenefits.