With $600 in aid set to end, many face financial ruin
Without boost from feds, state benefits average $204 a week
Hours on the phone. A busy signal. Missing payments. Bills piling up.
Texans who lost their job due to the coronavirus pandemic have been put through the wringer, but another blow may come next week: They could lose $600 per week in unemployment benefits.
More than a million claimants in Texas are currently getting state benefits — an average of $204 per week — in addition to another $600 per week if they lost their job due to the pandemic. The $600 was a boost from Congress intended to make workers whole; something that would hold the nation’s jobless over until the pandemic was brought under control.
But with the pandemic worsening in Texas and other parts of the country, the enhanced benefits are set to expire next week. As Congress wrangles over whether to pass another economic relief package and which programs to extend, millions of unemployed workers face sharp drops in income and rising anxieties over how they will get by.
One them is D’Andrea Richardson of Humble. Richardson, a single mother who lost her job as a product tester and then had a job offer rescinded because of the pandemic, has depended on $1,765 every two weeks to help support her four children and her sick mother.
Now, her benefits could plummet by two-thirds to $565.
“Without the $600, I would’ve made less than when I was working,” she said. “I can’t survive — our household can’t survive — on the minimum (benefits).”
In Texas, the recent surge in COVID-19 cases is threatening to derail a fragile economic recovery and make it even harder for workers to find jobs. On Wednesday, Texas saw the highest single-day jump in COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began with 217 — 56 more deaths than the secondhighest day on record, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of state data.
Last week, another 86,800 Texans applied for first-time unemployment benefits, according to the U.S. Labor Department. That’s well-above pre-pandemic rates, but much lower than the last two weeks when claims were trending up and above 100,000.
About 1.3 million Texans are currently receiving benefits, according to the Labor Department data.
Patrick Jankowski, an economist at the Greater Houston Partnership, a business-financed economic development group, calls the high levels of continued unemployment “disturbing,” noting that approximately a quarter-of-amillion people in the Houston region have continued to receive unemployment benefits for weeks — a level that has barely budged since April.
“There’s still a lot of people out there who have not found work,” he said. “The numbers still show a lot of people suffering financial distress.”
Nationally, 1.4 million applied for benefits last week; it was the first time unemployment claims have increased nationally in more than three months.
Struggle to get benefits
State unemployment agencies, overwhelmed by the onslaught of claims unlike anything the agencies have seen before, struggled to quickly process claims and roll out the expanded benefits provided by Congress.
In the first weeks after local officials issued stay-at-home orders, the millions of calls about unemployment benefits every day overwhelmed the state agency’s phone lines and the online portal to apply frequently crashed.
The Texas Workforce Commission struggled to increase its capacity to match the demand. Many workers had to try for several weeks before they were even able to file an application, forcing them to wait for desperately needed benefits.
Richardson said she waited on the phone for hours, finally got through, and eventually, her payments began.
But her problems with the TWC had only just begun. There’s a glitch in her claim that the unemployment office has yet been able to fix, so each time she requests the next two weeks of unemployment payments, she must wait for hours on the phone until an agent can help her.
“We’re so far behind in bills, and they’re no longer accepting, ‘Oh, because of coronavirus,’” Richardson said. “I don’t have it because I’m fighting with unemployment.”
Richardson is also one of tens of thousands of Texans who received an “overpayment” notice from the state. The TWC, which administers unemployment benefits, overpaid thousands of claimants in benefits and requested they pay the money back.
While the issue affects a fraction of the 1.3 million Texans getting benefits in the state, those who have received the notices say it’s just another bill to add to a distressing pile. Adding to Richardson’s concern is the recent death of her father, who lived on the south side of Houston, and the cost of paying for his funeral.
“It is a mess out here,” Richardson said. “There’s nowhere to turn. I have a 3-year-old, a 6-yearold, a 13-year-old and a 14-year old. Outside of (unemployment benefits), we have no sustainable income.”
Administration push
Experts and economists have warned that ending expanded unemployment benefits too soon would wreak more economic havoc for the country and on families like Richardson’s.
But some employers have complained that the boosted benefits have made it difficult to coax workers back. The Trump Administration has largely taken the side of such employers, pushing Republicans in Congress to eliminate the $600 benefit.
Republicans indicated this week that there may be a compromise on the expanded benefits, but the full $600 was unlikely to remain.
Some employers have complained in surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve of Dallas that benefits are resulting in fewer people wanting to apply for jobs that would pay equivalent to the benefits or less. The rebound in COVID-19 infections has prevented employers from bringing their old workers back, since employers must again reduce staff and hours not only for health reasons but also because customers are staying away.
In Texas, employees aren’t allowed to refuse returning without losing unemployment benefits, except in very limited situations related to COVID-19. Reasonable reasons to refuse work, the Texas Workforce Commission said, include being 65 years of age or older, being diagnosed with COVID-19, living with someone who was diagnosed with COVID-19, being quarantined due to close contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19, living in a household with a high-risk person, such as an elderly parent, or caring for a child if no other child care options are available.
That’s a relief for Richardson. She needs a job where she can work from home since her mother has malignant melanoma cancer. Taking a temp job isn’t worth her mother’s life, she said.
“It’s people out here like myself, we need help,” she said. “Jobs are not hiring. I can’t work at Burger King, not for $8 an hour, that’s not going to help me and my kids. (Congress) needs to figure out something to keep us going.”