What is the base period?
The Base Period is the period that we look at to determine if you have been paid sufficient wages to be eligible. Normally, your Base Period consists of the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters before the starting date of your new claim. The calendar quarters are: January 1 through March 31; April 1 through June 30; July 1 through September 30; October 1 through December 31. If wages from one of these quarters had to be used to establish a previous claim using the alternate Base Period (explained in the next Section), that quarter’s wages cannot be used again to compute your current claim.
The base period is the period of time we look at to determine if you have been paid enough wages to establish a claim. For Georgia, the base period is the first four of the last five calendar quarters completed at the time you file your claim. An alternative base period consisting of the most recently completed four calendar quarters will be used only when a claim cannot be established using the regular base period.
The “base period” is the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters immediately before the first day of an applicant’s benefit year. If an applicant does not have 20 weeks of covered employment in the “base period,” the “alternate base period” may be used. The “alternate base period” includes the most recently completed calendar quarter instead of the one five quarters ago. The base period never includes more than four quarters.
