A Playbook for Improving Unemployment Insurance Delivery

You can access the report on improveunemployment.com, or see the project on the New America landing page.

About the Playbook

This playbook presents a bold yet achievable North Star vision for what unemployment benefits can be, and the concrete steps needed to get there — concrete steps that, in almost every case, individual states have already tested.

To create the vision and map the steps, we collaborated with more than 50 advocacy groups, partners, dozens of state leaders and many unemployed workers. We highlight lessons learned from past recessions, recent pandemic-inspired innovations, and complementary benefit spaces like SNAP and WIC.

This is a playbook of what’s working to deliver unemployment benefits to those who need them.

We hope that this living playbook will inspire and drive further improvements, building on the successes of individual states. New America, supported by the Families and Workers Fund, will continue to update these pages as states develop more solutions. We invite you to submit your suggestions and stories here.

To submit or request changes, please enter an issue.

Dev Setup

Local

1. Clone the repo and navigate into the base folder
2. Install Jekyll
3. Run jekyll serve --watch --config _config-dev.yml
4. Install yarn
5. Install NPM dependencies yarn install
6. In another terminal, run POSTCSS with yarn postcss:watch

Docker / Clean Environment

Use these instructions if you need a clean/consistent environment inside a local Docker container.

1. Clone the repo and navigate into the base folder
2. Run docker build -t improveunemployment . (first time only)
3. Run docker run -it -p 4000:4000 -v "$(pwd):/workspace" --rm improveunemployment
4. Access the site at https://localhost:4000

Tips:

• This will reload content, CSS, and config changes live
• CTRL+C will stop the process from running
• If you need to run a Jekyll or Yarn command, launch a Bash terminal:
  • Docker Desktop: Choose the running image and click CLI
  • Command line: docker run -it -v "$(pwd):/workspace" --rm improveunemployment bash