In every state in the nation, if you have been laid off or furloughed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you are responsible for filing your unemployment.  But in Georgia, your employer is required to file for you.

Georgia requires employers — not the employees themselves — to file for unemployment every week for workers who have been furloughed or had their hours partially reduced, according to a recent emergency rule adopted by the Georgia Department of Labor.

While Georgia’s new rule applies to temporarily laid-off employees, rather than permanently laid-off ones, it has still impacted the vast majority of people in the state filing for unemployment, about 75 percent. The rule change was intended to streamline the process and ease the burden on unemployed people, in this crisis moment where more than 26 million Americans have lost their jobs in the past five weeks.

In practice, some Georgians say it’s left them in limbo if their employer doesn’t file on their behalf every week. Many employers run their payroll at most every two weeks. If the employer misses re-certifying them every week, they stand to lose money at a time when they need that money to pay their bills.

Employer-filed claims account for about 75 percent of the 1.1 million claims the state has processed since March 16, according to the Georgia Department of Labor.

If employers don’t know they’re supposed to file for employees, or if the employer is based in another state where the rules are different, furloughed employees could wind up missing out.