Employers can expect slightly higher expenses for unemployment insurance this year, based on , made up of administrators of unemployment insurance laws, employment services, and other programs. According to NASWA's State Unemployment Insurance Tax Survey, 35 of the 48 states that responded are predicting jumps in their UI revenue. The average increase is 16.5%. (It should be pointed out that UI taxes overall average less than 1% of wages.)

States' UI revenue can increase in several ways, says Rich Hobbie, NASWA's executive director. Among them: an increase in what's known as employers' "experience rate," the movement of employers to higher tax schedules; or an increase in the taxable wage base. In addition, an economic recovery itself can boost UI revenue, as more people get back to work.

Employers' experience rate will increase if they've instituted layoffs, and former employees have claimed unemployment benefits. "Recessions cause individual employers to experience increased unemployment taxes," Hobbie says. In this way, the system is counter-cyclical; rates increase after recessions, allowing the system to build up reserves, which then are drawn on during the next downturn. Twenty states indicated that higher experience rates were behind their expected increases in UI revenues.

Fifteen states say revenue would rise as a result of employers moving to higher tax schedules. Employers' shift to higher tax schedules can occur automatically, as a result of declining balances overall in the states' UI trust funds, Hobbie says. "If the states draw down the balances in their trust funds, it might activate higher tax schedules."

Finally, UI revenue could increase through an expansion of the taxable wage base. That's the case within 11 states, according to the survey. For 2011, the amount of wages subject to UI tax ranges from $7,000 in Arizona, California, Florida and Puerto Rico, to $37,300 in Washington.