Fiscal Note (State Board of Education)
HB 4416 does not have a fiscal impact on the Illinois State Board of Education. Currently, most school district support staff are not eligible for unemployment benefits if they have reasonable assurance of employment continuing for the next school year. The bill makes these staff eligible for these benefits. Categories of staff impacted include paraprofessionals (classroom and individual aides), bus drivers, secretaries, cooks and cafeteria workers, health care aides, safety and security staff, and various other categories of staff not working twelve months. The State Board of Education does not collect the data required to determine a precise financial impact on school districts. However, estimations based on the Non certified Staff Salary Study suggest the statewide cost to school districts could be significant.

State Mandates Fiscal Note (Dept. of Commerce & Economic Opportunity)
HB 4416 adds both a financial and clerical mandate to school districts. Many school districts, in lieu of paying contributions, reimburse the State for the actual amount of any unemployment benefits paid. Because of this, special care is taken to ensure claims are accurate to minimize the impact on district finances. Additional staff time, and potentially additional clerical staff, will be needed to review and process the increase in claims that will follow should this bill become law. Ultimately, the State Board of Education cannot provide a comprehensive effect of the proposed mandate.

Fiscal Note (Dept. of Employment Security)
Pursuant to the Fiscal Note Act, 25 ILCS 50/1, the Illinois Department of Employment Security (Department) has reviewed House Bill 4416 and has determined that the legislation could have a fiscal impact on the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund (UTF) and administrative costs for the Department. The Department gathered data from 2020 when the law was changed to remove the unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility bar for non-instructional, non-principally administrative, and non-research academic employees, and ran a cost estimate using 2026 estimated wage data. The Department assumed that 75% of workers who were eligible at that time would be eligible for purposes of the cost estimate. This assumption was supported by labor market re-entry rates (members of this category of workers securing alternative seasonal employment), and the general choice of many unemployed individuals to not file for UI benefits. The Department estimated that the annual cost to provide these academic employees UI benefits between and within terms of academic years, assuming the employees are otherwise eligible for UI benefits, would be between $138,000,000 and $176,000,000. Approximately 93% of the total amount of unemployment benefits would be paid dollar-for-dollar by public schools, colleges, universities, and not-for-profit academic institutions that make payments in lieu of contributions. Using the federal Resource Justification Model (RJM) for the cost of administering UI benefits, the Department additionally estimated that implementing HB 4416 would cost approximately $3,600,000, including the cost of updating systems, processing new claims, administering the additional weekly benefits and appeals, and an increase in postage. The Department also asked the United States Department of Labor (USDOL) for a standard, informal conformity review of the language of this bill with federal regulations. USDOL did not note a conformity issue.