[pmiller2]

I agree that unemployment benefits aren’t the metaphorical ejector seat here. But, regarding “fired” vs “laid off,” at least in California, you’re generally eligible for unemployment benefits even if you were fired, as long as you weren’t fired for illegal or malicious activity. In particular, if you didn’t care about losing a reference and burning bridges, you could get fired for poor performance and still collect unemployment. I can’t think of a plausible situation where it would be beneficial, but you could certainly do it.

[lowercased]

thinking about it again, that's possibly closer to the mark. I did let an employee go years back, and he then filed for unemployment and I had to answer some questions from the state - did I agree, or want to deny the claim or something like that. It was for poor performance, and I was probably at fault for the poor performance on his part (not as much as he was, but still partially).

[totaldude87]

So what did you do? did you say OK to the State?

[lowercased]

yes. I believe it caused our 'unemployment insurance' to the state to go up, but... it's been close to 20 years - I don't remember the specifics :)