Unemployment Support

To apply for unemployment, visit www.edd.ca.gov/Unemployment/ through the California Employment Development Department (EDD). For more help, contact the State of California Employment Development Department by phone at 408-216-6200. Tiếng Việt: 1-800-547-2058.

For local and multi-lingual assistance, please contact the Santa Clara County CAN (COVID-19 Assistance Navigation) at 408-809-2124 for assistance with safety net benefits, EDD eligibility and application, or other coronavirus-related resources. For more information go to www.SantaClaraCountyCAN.org.

Governor Newsom joined Bitwise Industries and the Kapor Center to launch www.OnwardCa.org, a new platform connecting and training displaced California workers with more than 70,000 job opportunities in critical industries.

The Employment Development Department’s Unemployment Insurance webpage contains a lot of other helpful information on how to apply, including:

• How-to videos in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Mandarin.
• An application checklist.
• FAQs in English and Spanish.

Benefit amounts: If you’re eligible, you can receive benefits that range from $40-$450 per week, depending on how much you made before. You can use the Unemployment Insurance Calculator to help estimate your potential weekly benefit amount. Unemployment benefits have been expanded through several assistance programs, including:

• The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program provides up to 39 weeks of unemployment benefits to those who normally don’t qualify for unemployment assistance, such as independent contractors and gig workers.
• The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program extends unemployment benefits for up to 13 weeks for those who have exhausted benefits.
• The Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program provides an additional $600 per week in unemployment benefits for the period of April 4, 2020, through July 31, 2020.

CalWIN can help you with cash aid and other benefits such as food assistance or medical services. Apply online, or call the County of Santa Clara Social Services Agency at 1-877-962-3633.

Job Search Resources

Free training and professional development resources:

Work2Future

If you are seeking employment, Work2Future hosts a local job board where resumes can be submitted directly to hiring managers. To build on professional skills, Santa Clara County residents can access Metrix for free. Candor provides an updated, user-generated list of companies that are still hiring (mostly focused on the tech industry and large corporations).

SJPL Works Program

With the SJPL Works program, employment seekers can find resume and job application assistance, mock interviews, career exploration. Small Business Owners can also find referrals and market research. 

Additional resources

Kaplan offers free online college courses, allows students to enroll at Purdue Global and complete a course that may be used toward a degree, certificate, or micro-credential, and training for credentials (fields of financial services, wealth management, and leadership).

ServSafe provides free food safety courses and career development courses for food and hospitality workers.

CompTIA: is offering free e-learning for CompTIA IT Fundamentals (ITF+) and other resources for displaced workers, students, career changers or anyone else who has ever thought about working in information technology.

Coursera has free courses for high school, college students, professionals. You can explore new career paths, for example IT support, EMT, Data Science, Graphic Design, Web Development and Coding.

Shaw Academy: is offering one month of free courses including: Technology, photography, finance, marketing, design, health, business, music lessons.

If you are seeking employment, Searchlight can directly refer you to companies hiring for 700+ open roles, mostly in the tech industry. If you’d like to help someone get a job, Searchlight makes it easy for you to provide a reference. Jobseekers with a Searchlight referral are 5X more likely to get an interview.

Companies with opportunities in Northern California and the Greater Bay Area region include:

• 7-Eleven, the nation’s largest convenience store chain, expects to hire up to 20,000 new store employees to meet increased demand amid the coronavirus outbreak. Some of the new roles are for delivery workers to help the company meet a spike in mobile orders received through its delivery app.
• Amazon has seen an unanticipated boom in business now that coronavirus     “shelter-in-place” orders across the nation have limited many Americans to online shopping. The company plans to hire 100,000 people nationwide for full-time and part-time roles in Amazon’s delivery network and at its fulfillment centers.
• Albertsons Companies, the parent company for Albertsons, Safeway, Randalls, United Supermarkets and several other food and drug retail chains seeks to hire 30,000 new employees to keep up with increased demand.
• CVS  said it is looking to fill a total of 50,000 full-time, part-time and temporary positions nationwide, including “store associates, home delivery drivers, distribution center employees and member/customer service professionals.” On its website, the retail pharmacy chain said the new employees will help take some strain off its existing workers. The company plans to hire many of the employees who were furloughed or laid off by some of its major business clients, including Hilton and Marriott. CVS says it plans to use virtual job fairs, virtual interviews and virtual job tryouts during its hiring process.
• Dollar General is looking to add up to 50,000 employees to its workforce by the end of April. The company said it anticipates most of its new roles will be temporary, but it also expects some of the new employees will receive “long-term career growth opportunities.”
• Domino’s plans to hire 10,000 employees to work as pizza makers, delivery personnel and customer service representatives. The company is also looking for people to fill roles at its supply chain centers in addition to management and assistant management positions.
• GE Healthcare needs additional manufacturing employees to build medical ventilators, which have been in high demand and short supply during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Instacart  is looking to hire hundreds of thousands of workers to meet surging demand for grocery deliveries as millions of people are urged to stay home. The on-demand grocery startup said it wants to hire 300,000 “full-service shoppers” in North America over the next three months.
• Papa John’s is one of three major pizza chains looking to take advantage of all the restaurant closings across the country. The company announced plans to hire 20,000 new restaurant team members.
• PepsiCo seeks to hire 6,000 full-time, frontline employees in the coming months. The company is also providing “enhanced benefits” to its US-based workers and increasing its compensation for its current US frontline employees amid the coronavirus pandemic.
• Pizza Hut is recruiting more than 30,000 employees across the nation and says its new drivers can start working in as little as five hours upon hiring.
• Walmart, plans to hire 150,000 workers for full-time, part-time and temporary positions at its distribution and fulfillment centers across the United States. Walmart is also expediting the hiring process and applicants can “get hired and begin working … in as little as 24 hours,” according to Walmart’s website.