[Read more on who is excluded and what benefits are included.]

Workers in California may also be eligible for paid sick days that can be used during school closures under state law, which provides a minimum of three days with full pay. Local laws may provide more.

Additionally, the California Family School Partnership Act entitles workers at employers with 25 or more employees to up to 40 hours of job-protected, unpaid leave per year in a child care emergency, including the closure or unavailability of a school or child care provider.

Beyond paid sick days and paid leave, you can apply for unemployment insurance if you need to care for a child whose school is closed, and you’ve exhausted other options for care. Under the CARES Act, unemployment insurance benefits can last up to 39 weeks and will include a $600 boost over regular payments through July.

If your child (or another close family member) is sick with Covid-19 or another serious health condition, you can apply for California Paid Family Leave (P.F.L.) to take care of them. P.F.L. provides 60 percent or 70 percent of your wages, depending on income, for six weeks (extended to eight weeks, beginning July 1), and there is no waiting period.

How do you apply for benefits through the state?

You can apply for unemployment insurance online, or by mailing or faxing the application to the Employment Development Department (Spanish version here). You may also apply by phone, but expect long wait times.

Here is a checklist of all the information you’ll need to apply. If it takes you more than five business days to connect by phone, ask the E.D.D. to backdate your claim to the Sunday before you started calling; just keep documentation of your attempts (like screenshots of your call log).

The best way to apply for Paid Family Leave is online, using State Disability Insurance (S.D.I.) Online. The E.D.D. also accepts P.F.L. applications by mail, but you have to request that a hard copy be mailed to you (unlike with unemployment insurance, which allows you to mail or fax a form printed from the E.D.D.’s website).