When I have been unemployed, I have only managed to collect around 300.00 a week tops, and only for about six weeks, even though, my income has always been much higher than that, and I have worked years consecutively with no downtime and yet only qualify for a few weeks pay. Now. Once my unemployment pay ran out, I was no longer allowed to log in and state I was still unemployed. So, how accurate can the unemployment rate be if people are still out of work but Uncle Sam no longer wants to hear from them?