Senate committee advances changes to unemployment trust to lower employer contributions and raise benefits

Juneau — The Senate Labor and Commerce Committee on April 10 adopted a committee substitute for Senate Bill 217 and reported the measure from committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes.

Senator Bjorkman, the committee chair, said the governor-sponsored bill aims to "seek balance in an overfunding position of the unemployment insurance trust" by reducing employer contributions while increasing the maximum weekly unemployment benefit to $470 and indexing that maximum to the wage base. He also said the bill would divert an additional tenth of 1 percent of employer contributions to a state training and education program for workforce development and make adjustments to the workers' compensation status of volunteer sports officials and certain co-op executive board members.

Conrad Jackson, staff to Senator Bjorkman, explained the committee substitute adopted as the working document. "The CS before the members ... makes a couple of changes," Jackson said, noting the substitute adds a background-check requirement for instructors at the Alaska Vocational Technical Center (AVTEC) and includes transition language in later sections to allow time to facilitate those checks. Jackson described additional conforming edits in the substitute.

The committee took no public testimony on SB 217. After discussion and staff explanation, a committee member moved to adopt the committee substitute as the working document; the chair briefly objected for purposes of explanation, heard the staff review, then removed the objection and allowed the motion to pass. The chair later announced the substitute was reported from committee with attached fiscal notes.

The committee did not enter a roll-call vote on the record during the discussion and did not adopt final floor action at the hearing; the measure was reported from committee for follow-up action.

Next steps: The committee will include SB 217 in future floor or committee scheduling consistent with the attached fiscal notes and recommendations.

(Reporting from the April 10, 2026 Senate Labor and Commerce Committee hearing in Juneau.)