Reactivating Your Pennsylvania Unemployment Benefits: A Step-by-Step Guide

When you land a job while unemployed in Pennsylvania, you must stop claiming your weekly unemployment benefits. If you end up unemployed again, you can reactivate your unemployment claim. This allows you to continue collecting benefits on the initially awarded amount. If you simply miss filing your claim forms for a week or more, you must also go through this process to reopen your unemployment claim. Once reactivated, you can resume filing your unemployment claims.

Step 1

Get your most recent job details together, such as the address, supervisor's name, dates of employment, the business phone number and your reason for separation. If you were not working while the claim was deactivated, you do not need to gather any information.

Step 2

Call the unemployment compensation (UC) service center at 888-313-7284, which is required as of May 2011 because online reactivation has been discontinued. The center is accessible on Sundays between 7 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. and Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. If the last number of your Social Security number is an odd number, you should call on Monday, Wednesday or Friday and on the other days of the week if the last number is an even number.

Step 3

Ask the service center representative to re-open your unemployment claim. You will be asked for your employment information since you initially filed the claim. The representative will take down your information and reactivate your claim for you.