For people worriedly watching their unemployment benefits dwindle, help is on the way — but now the question is precisely when that next wave of money hits bank accounts.
A day after President Donald Trump put aside his misgivings to sign a $900 billion coronavirus relief bill which he days ago called a “disgrace,” unemployment-benefit experts are trying to nail down new questions that are technical in nature, but critical for millions.
These are things like how federal and state labor agencies interpret bill language on effective dates and how quickly state agencies can resume jobless benefits and also layer on a supplemental $300 weekly payout.
As of Dec. 26, an estimated 12 million workers either received their last unemployment check or saw their benefits drop to $0 because of deadlines on benefits written into the CARES Act. The freshly-enacted bill pushes eligibility for jobless benefits to mid-March.
Separate from those extensions, the bill green lights $300 supplemental payments on top of the underlying weekly unemployment check.
“If you are an unemployed worker, of course you can breathe some sigh of relief,” said Indivar Dutta-Gupta, co-executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. But with Trump’s delay, “he has introduced substantial uncertainty for people who are struggling to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis.”
Here’s a look at some of the open questions on what’s next for workers:
Why can’t states add the extra money now?
State labor agencies need some time to train their workers, change coding and implement other back-end measures. Dutta-Gupta said some states may be more nimble than others carrying out the new program. “You’re going to see a lot of variability,” he said.
For people who typically wouldn’t be eligible for jobless assistance because they weren’t formally deemed an “employee” — like a gig worker — the bill is extending “Pandemic Unemployment Assistance” (PUA) payments.
For someone who would typically be classified as an “employee,” the bill extends “Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation” (PEUC) payments.
In each case, the bill is tacking on another 11 weeks of eligibility, through March 14, and supplying $300 on top of the underlying weekly benefit, according to Michele Evermore, Senior Policy Analyst, at the National Employment Law Project.
The continuation might not be so seamless, Dutta-Gupta explained. “It’s going to be more of a struggle than people think,” he said.
When is the money coming?
Most states start their week for calculating jobless benefits on Sundays, Dutta-Gupta said. “It looks like, regardless of when people apply in the coming days for a week of unemployment assistance, they will have lost one week of eligibility throughout virtually all of the country,” Dutta-Gupta said.
Labor agencies will be able to restart the PEUC and PUA weekly checks “pretty expeditiously,” said Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation. He’s one of the researchers behind the estimate that 12 million people could see their jobless benefits lapse after Dec. 26.
Then there’s the supplemental $300. “That has been a bigger challenge as they have to batch people together from multiple programs and deliver a second flat payment. I think states will take 3-6 weeks to get that going,” Stettner said.
Evermore had a different estimate on when the supplemental $300 would start hitting accounts. It could be a two- to three-week range before the $300 was layered onto unemployment checks.
Douglas Holmes, president of UWC – Strategic Services on Unemployment & Workers’ Compensation, an organization representing the business community on unemployment insurance matters, said a similar timeline could apply on the supplemental money. “Three weeks is the general conventional response in normal times,” he said.
The federal Department of Labor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What can I do to receive all the benefits?
As federal and state agencies figure out how to implement the law, the best thing jobless workers can do is file for unemployment this week as they normally would and collect all their records to prove they did, Dutta-Gupta and Holmes said.
If a state doesn’t pay this week, it might still find a way in the future to send the benefits to people who did apply this week, Dutta-Gupta said.
When the CARES Act authorized the extra weekly $600 unemployment payments through July, some workers had a lag getting the extra money.
States, in general, “have put in some serious reforms to be able to improve the administration of benefits” during 2020, Dutta-Gupta said. “State are under — and rightfully so — a lot of pressure” to get money to households in need, he added.
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