$1,400 payments set to begin arriving this month
Households will begin receiving the $1,400 stimulus payments included in the pandemic-relief bill approved by Congress before the end of March, according to the White House.
“The Treasury and IRS are working to ensure that we will be able to start getting payments out this month,” the White House said in a blog post Wednesday. Government agencies “are building on lessons learned from previous rounds of payments to increase the number of households that will get electronic payments, which are substantially faster than checks,” the post said.
President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation into law Thursday, a package that includes more than $410 billion of direct payments for most Americans.
Individuals who earn as much as $75,000, or couples making $150,000, plus their children or adult dependents, qualify for the full $1,400 per person. Single parents with at least one dependent who earn $112,500 or less also get the full amount.
Families in which some members have different citizenship and immigration classifications are also eligible for a payment, if at least one person has a Social Security number.
The payments phase out much more quickly than in previous rounds: An individual with income of $80,000, or a couple with $160,000, get nothing.
For those who have already filed their tax returns, the IRS will use income data for 2020 to determine eligibility and size of payments. For people who have yet to file, the IRS will review 2019 tax data to determine the payments.
The IRS will send the payments via direct deposit for individuals for whom they have bank account information on file. Social Security, Veterans Affairs and other federal benefit recipients will receive their payments the same way they typically get their monthly transfers. Others will be sent paper checks or prepaid debit cards.
Other aid in the bill that Biden will sign spans jobless benefits to child tax credits.
Jobless claims rise in California
Unemployment claims in California topped 100,000 last week, federal officials reported Thursday, a setback that suggests the pandemic is still hampering the state’s job market.
California workers filed 105,900 initial claims for unemployment benefits for the week ending March 6, up 16,900 from the 89,000 first-time claims workers filed the previous week, the U.S. Labor Department reported.
Nearly one year since state and local government agencies began to order business shutdowns to combat the deadly bug, California’s job market remains frail.
Meanwhile, unemployment claims filed nationwide improved. An estimated 712,000 workers in the U.S. filed claims during the week ending March 6, down 42,000 from 754,000 claims filed the prior week. The nationwide numbers were adjusted for seasonal variations.
For 45 of the last 49 weeks since the business shutdowns began, weekly unemployment claims in California have topped 100,000.
During January and February 2020 — the final two months before the onset of the shutdowns — California workers were filing an average of 44,800 unemployment claims a week.
California last week accounted for 15% of all the unemployment claims filed in the U.S. last week, using numbers that weren’t adjusted for seasonal changes. The state’s labor force represents 11.8% of the nation’s employment overall.
Uber, Lyft to share bad-driver data
Uber Technologies and Lyft have created a program to share information about drivers and delivery people deactivated from their platforms for the most serious offenses, furthering a safety push by ride-hailing companies.
The Industry Sharing Safety Initiative will allow the companies to share information about drivers who have been deactivated for sexual assault, based on classification from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, or murder.
Ride-hailing companies have long struggled to maintain a consistently safe environment for all passengers. In 2018, Uber said there were 3,000 allegations of sexual assaults involving drivers or passengers in the U.S. The company’s license was revoked in London several times in the past few years over safety concerns, although it won an 18-month extension last September.
San Francisco-based Uber has attempted to differentiate itself from competitors by introducing new features and committing to releasing safety data every two years. Lyft had also promised to release a safety study but it has yet to do so.
“Safety and trust continue to be the basis and the foundation of our platform, and that’s why it’s just so exciting to be able to find some common ground even with competitors,” said Jennifer Brandenburger, head of policy development and research at Lyft.
HireRight, an Irvine-based background screening company, will facilitate the program by managing data submitted from individual companies, and matching information. The program is open to other transportation and delivery companies in the U.S. such as DoorDash or Grubhub provided the companies agree to specific data requirements.