Some say hard choices loom if jobless aid ends

INDIANAPOLIS — Tina Morton recently faced a choice: Pay the bills — or buy a birthday gift for a child? Derrisa Green is falling further behind on rent. Sylvia Soliz just had her electricity cut off.

Unemployment has forced aching decisions on millions of Americans and their families in the face of a viral pandemic that has closed shops and restaurants and paralyzed travel. Their predicaments stand to grow bleaker if Congress does not extend two unemployment

programs that are set to expire the day after Christmas.

If no agreement is reached in negotiations taking place on Capitol Hill, then more than 9 million people will lose federal jobless aid that averages about $320 a week and that typically is their only source of income.

Green, 39, and her husband are among them.The couple live in Dyer, Ind., near Chicago, and they have eight children. Green’s husband is a self-employed truck driver whose business disappeared when the pandemic broke out in the spring. Only in October did he start to pick up occasional work.

He now receives about $235 a week in unemployment aid. Even so, “all of our bills are late,” Green said. They keep missing rent payments on their home, and they’ve received several shutoff notices from utilities but have managed to pay just before service was to be cut off.

“That’s really scary,” Green said, “because what are we going to do when we lose the unemployment money?”

The end of the jobless aid is approaching at an especially perilous time. Job growth slowed sharply in November, and the virus has continued to surge across the country.

Even with the prospect of an effective vaccine being widely distributed in the coming months, economists say the picture will worsen before it improves. Many foresee a net loss of jobs in December for the first time since April.

On Friday, President-elect Joe Biden called on Congress to quickly approve a bipartisan $908 billion package that would establish a $300-a-week jobless benefit as well as send aid to states and localities, help schools and universities, revive subsidies for businesses, and support transit systems and airlines. Details are still being worked out, but the outlines of a final bill could emerge soon.

More than 20 million people are now receiving unemployment benefits. More than half are beneficiaries of two programs that were part of rescue-aid legislation that Congress enacted in March. One program made self-employed and contract workers eligible for jobless aid for the first time and provided 39 weeks of support. The other program supplied 13 weeks of extended benefits to the 26 weeks that most states provide.

About 9.1 million people who are receiving aid from those programs will be cut off Dec. 26, according to a report from the Century Foundation. An additional 4.4 million are expected to exhaust the 39 weeks by year’s end. If Congress agrees to provide more weeks of aid and to revive both programs, then those beneficiaries could keep receiving aid next year.

BENEFITS’ CUTOFF

That would be a lifesaver for Soliz, of Corpus Christi, Texas, who had her electricity cut off. Soliz, 36, still owes part of her rent for November and December, and she received an eviction notice.

In March, she was laid off from her job as a nurse’s assistant at a senior living facility. She’s now receiving $414 in jobless aid every two weeks. With four children, it doesn’t go very far.

“The day I get it, it’s already gone because my kids need so many things,” Soliz said. “Of course, I have to pay a portion to whatever bill I have, so that way I can stretch it out. But every time another check comes in, it’s another bill.”

Soliz is applying for a new job, and she checks in with her old employer. So far, no luck. She also worries about contracting covid-19. Soliz is hopeful that Congress will agree to provide more aid, but she feels “they are basically gambling with us.”

A cutoff of jobless benefits now, with so many millions of Americans still receiving the aid, would be unusually early compared with previous recessions. In the aftermath of the recession of 2008-09, the government extended unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, and the additional aid lasted through 2013. When that program ended, about 1.3 million people lost benefits — a small fraction of the number who would lose jobless aid this time.

Other government protections will expire at the end of the year, including a federal moratorium on some evictions for renters. A suspension of payments on federal student loans will expire at the end of January.

“I am very afraid of people facing homelessness — that’s our top concern,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. “It’s a terrible unforced policy error to make. It will slow the recovery that we’re having by cutting off these benefits so early.”

About one in six renters in the United States are behind on their rent, according to a survey from the Census Bureau. And 12% of adults say their families didn’t have enough to eat at some point in the past week, the survey found. That’s up from just 3.7% in 2019, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

DECISIONS TO MAKE

A wrenching set of choices has confronted Keli Paaske, who lives in the Kansas City, Mo., area. Since being furloughed in the spring from her sales job at a company that makes fire doors, Paaske, 56, has cut back her grocery budget. She thought she’d be called back once the virus waned. But when her boss called in August, it was with a different message: Her job had been eliminated.

Paaske had hesitated to spend the $360 needed to euthanize her 15-year-old dog, which had a brain tumor, before going through with it. Paaske isn’t sure how she would manage without unemployment aid. She may seek help from her parents, who are in their 80s, something she has resisted doing. If she doesn’t find a job by March, she said, she’ll stop leasing her car.

Across the country, a cutoff of jobless aid would disproportionately affect Black Americans, according to data from the Century Foundation. About 18% of unemployment-aid recipients are Black, the foundation said, though Black Americans make up 12% of the workforce.

More than 57% of recipients are white. Nearly 13% are Hispanic. There is no demographic data on about onefifth of recipients.

Morton, the woman with the birthday dilemma, used to clean houses near where she lives in Winchester, Ky. But there’s been little work since the pandemic struck. Like many other single mothers, she has struggled with the need to find another job while simultaneously caring for children — a son and two nephews she has custody of — who are attending school online at home.

“Single parents cannot go out here and … just find any job,” said Morton, 39. “We’ve got our kids here that are stuck at home.”

Recently, Morton had to choose between paying a phone bill and buying one of her nephews a birthday present. (She got him a gift). If her jobless aid ends, then she expects to face painful decisions.

She’s particularly worried about her two nephews.

“That’s what hurts me the most,” she said. “My job is to give them more — give them better than where they came from.”