Official Site of The State of New Jersey

Your identity will be verified when you first apply for Unemployment Insurance benefits. It may also be validated annually if you are claiming weekly benefits.

You will be asked a series of multiple choice questions obtained from public records that relate to your background to verify and confirm your identity and to reduce the risk of fraud. We do not save any information that is used to verify your identity. 

If you choose not to participate in the identity verification process when you first apply, or you fail the verification process at that time, you can still submit your application and start to certify for benefits each week. However, we will not make any benefit payments to you until we confirm that your identity has been verified. 

To verify your identity in person, you can go to a desingated One-Stop Career Center with acceptable documentation to verify your identity. NOTE: Not every center can do in-person identity verification. A list of those that do can be found here. We will mail you instructions explaining this process, including what documents you need to bring. These will include original or certified copies of your Social Security Card, and other documentation that contains your name and current mailing address (PO boxes are not acceptable for this purpose).

Non-residents of New Jersey are permitted to fax their proof of identity documents. If you are an out-of-state claimant, we will mail you instructions explaining what you must do to prove your identity. Don’t fax us printouts of documents. If you want to submit a digital copy of a document, use a free mobile app like Adobe Scan or Dropbox to transform a mobile phone picture into a high-contrast, black-and-white PDF file you can print and fax.