Difficult decisions confronting the unemployed
Some don’t see state benefits; for others, extra cash may end
Lily Rogers is falling through the cracks.
The 34-year-old mother of four was a contract child care worker at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland before the COVID-19 pandemic put her out of work in March.
Rogers’ husband has continued working as an Amazon delivery driver through the pandemic, preserving some of the family’s income. His job also put him at greater risk of contracting the coronavirus.
Rogers thought it was good news when the federal CARES Act expanded unemployment insurance to make gig workers, the self-employed and contract workers eligible for benefits. Prior to the pandemic, those workers did not qualify for unemployment.
But after filing her unemployment claim March 17, Rogers has yet to receive any money from the state.
She’s been checking the Texas Workforce Commission website daily and relying on corn dogs and lunches from a neighborhood school to feed her family.
“Every day, every week, I’m trying to see if the status has changed. It says you will qualify, but when exactly does the money get to me? When do I get that?” Rogers said. “Unemployment is more fictitious than real for people like me.”
Rogers is one of the San Antonio workers who have lost their jobs amid the pandemic and for weeks or months have unsuccessfully tried to apply for unemployment. Others have managed to file claims but have been rejected for various reasons.
And workers who are receiving unemployment checks have a looming cutoff date to worry about for funds that make up a sizable chunk of their payments.
Even as the federal government has massively expanded the unemploy
ment insurance system, it's been an unreliable safety net for workers. And the biggest part of the expansion, a provision giving unemployed workers an extra $600 per week, expires after July.
Amanda Kretz began working at marketing company Campus Box Media in February and was furloughed weeks later.
Kretz, a mother of two, said she immediately applied for unemployment insurance. Because she was furloughed, however, it was mistakenly not counted as a total job loss in the TWC's system, she said. She was denied benefits.
About three weeks after appealing the decision, Kretz was approved for benefits. By then, she'd found work as a leasing consultant at Rent 2 Own HQ, a used car dealership.
“I'll honestly say it was tough at first. I was very discouraged, and my drive was low,” Kretz said, recalling the period after she was initially denied unemployment. “Everyone I saw on social media was raving about their stimulus check and excited about taking a break from work, thriving off unemployment.”
During the lengthy, uncertain wait for unemployment benefits, Kretz re-evaluated what she needed to earn to keep her family afloat. That prompted her to look for work.
“After much deliberation and looking at my finances, there was just no way I could afford to depend on government assistance,” she said.
For workers who succeeded in filing their unemployment claims, it's uncertain how many job openings there will be by July 31, when the extra $600 per week is set to expire, or if it will be safe to return to work by then.
Economists largely agree that the unemployment rate is not likely any time soon to again approach the record lows seen earlier this year and throughout 2019. That raises questions of what will happen if the additional unemployment benefits expire and jobs remain scarce.
That's assuming that you've successfully gotten on unemployment.
For people such as Rogers, the past few weeks have been about cutting costs and routinely visiting the TWC website.
Rogers canceled auto insurance on one of the family's two vehicles to save $40 a month. With just one vehicle, she and her husband are forced into making a difficult decision: They either spend the day lined up outside the food bank, or Roger's husband goes to work.
“My husband had to choose to sit in line or make hours at work,” she said. “If he chose the line, we're going to get food, but he'll spend eight hours in line and miss out on his paycheck.”
Other people need the food bank more, anyway, Rogers said. Unlike others, at least she has the “privilege” of receiving free school lunches, she said.
Frustrated with the unemployment system, many workers — including Rogers — have turned to social media groups to find work opportunities and resources for the near term.
The TWC, which administers unemployment claims, has received on average millions of calls per day since the pandemic struck. The agency has hired hundreds of workers, opened new call centers and updated its technology to better handle the historic wave of joblessness.
Since mid-March, the TWC has processed more than triple the number of unemployment claims that it processed in all of 2019.
A TWC spokesman pointed to the $5.3 billion in unemployment benefits the agency has processed for Texas workers and said people having trouble applying should go through the commission's website rather than call.
“If someone has applied, we encourage them to request payments every two weeks,” spokesman Cisco Gamez said. “This will speed up the process for payments if they become eligible.”
But workers have little recourse if their claim is rejected or if they simply don't hear back. And other work opportunities are scarce in the time of a pandemic.
The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest since the Great Depression, as 20.5 million Americans were thrown out of work last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The BLS projects that 18.1 million of those jobs — 90 percent — are temporary layoffs. About 2 million of the job losses are likely permanent.
Even as businesses in Texas have begun reopening this month, it's far from clear how many of the 1.8 million jobs lost statewide so far will return post-pandemic, economists said.
Rogers doesn't expect that new job opportunities will reappear later this year. But she has difficulty seeing that far out right now. These days, Rogers worries about how she'll keep food on the table and pay for diapers for her two youngest children.
She takes solace in the fact that “right now, my kids are young enough to eat a burger between two of them.”
For workers who are receiving unemployment benefits, July 31 is looming.
The average weekly unemployment benefit in Texas at the end of March was $426, according to the Labor Department. Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, unemployment recipients also receive $600 per week on top of whatever the state benefit is.
That means the average unemployment recipient in Texas will bring in $1,026 each week, just under the statewide average weekly wage of $1,109 — and more than the $965 average weekly wage in Bexar County.
Economists say the additional $600 per week is one of the most beneficial actions the government has taken in response to the downturn brought on by the coronavirus. If the government can keep workers whole during the immediate crisis, the country will rebound faster post-pandemic, said a labor economist.
“The $600 top-up was really good to do immediately,” said Stephen Wandner, a research fellow at the Michigan-based W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “When we start to come out of this, the hope is that people will not be behind on rent, car payments, all of that, and they'll be able to get back and start spending again.”
In some cases, workers are earning more on unemployment than they did on the job. And they may be inclined to try to stay away from the workplace for fear of contracting the virus on the job.
In Texas, if an employer calls an employee back to work as the economy reopens and the employee refuses, that employee would lose their unemployment benefits — and their job.
The state, however, is making exceptions. Workers who live with someone 65 or older or who have children and can't find child care would be allowed to stay home and continue collecting unemployment.
There's a question of fairness. Workers at businesses deemed essential are still required to go to work, often for lower pay than what people currently on unemployment are making, said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
“Those people didn't get a pay increase for putting up with more risk while their neighbors who got laid off from similar jobs find themselves in a financially stronger position,” Burtless noted.
The choice of whether to go back to work was less clear for Russ Tilley, a waiter at Bourbon Street Seafood Kitchen who was furloughed in mid-March, during the onset of the pandemic.
After waiting weeks to receive unemployment, Tilley in April began getting checks comparable to what he was earning at the restaurant.
But after Gov. Greg Abbott allowed restaurants to reopen this month at limited capacity, Tilley was called to come back to work.
He decided to go back. But after three days, he said, the risk was too great. He chose to stay home.
At 61 years old, he said, he would rather live off his savings for now than risk catching the virus.
“I'm one of those people in the risk category,” said Tilley, who also takes care of his elderly mother, who lives separately. “If I'm in the restaurant and I get COVID-19, I can give it to her. She's 83, and she has COPD,” or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“I just can't do it, man,” he said. Tilley is unsure what the rest of the year will bring. He doesn't expect to continue receiving unemployment benefits, and he eventually wants to go back to work at Bourbon Street or somewhere else this year.
For now, he hopes his savings can last until the pandemic subsides. “I don't want to spend all my savings,” he said, “but I don't want to go back until it's safe.”
No one knows with any certainty when that'll be. It's also unclear whether Congress will opt to extend the added benefit.
Whether the program is continued will depend on how many jobs return over the next month. But Congress has some time to wait and see, said Wandner of the Upjohn Institute.
But there may not be the political appetite in Congress to prolong the unemployment program.
In a recent interview with the Texas Tribune, Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district includes parts of North Bexar County, criticized some aspects of the government's response to the pandemic, including the $600 added benefit, which he said is deterring people from returning to work.
“I had serious reservations” about supporting the CARES Act, Roy said. “We've allocated close to $3 trillion in different ways, shapes and forms. We need a complete audit of that to know where these dollars are going.”
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, meanwhile, said he supports tweaks to the unemployment insurance system that would provide greater protections for workers. The San Antonio Democrat also suggested that he would support an extension in July of the federal unemployment benefit if mass unemployment persists into the summer.
“Workers should not be forced to re-enter the workforce unless and until it is safe to do so,” Castro said. “Sustaining adequate unemployment compensation during the entirety of the pandemic is both a moral necessity and smart down payment on post-pandemic economic growth.”
Burtless, the Brookings Institution fellow, said he doesn't expect Congress to extend the $600 benefit. But he said he could see Congress extending the duration of unemployment benefits.
In most states, a person can receive unemployment for 26 weeks. The CARES Act allows recipients to stay on unemployment for up to 39 weeks.
“At the end of the year, the unemployment situation is still going to be bad,” Burtless said.
Congress could choose to continue paying out a flat federal benefit on top of state unemployment benefits after July. But lawmakers may reduce the benefit to some number lower than $600 that is “not so much that people are actually better off if they remain unemployed,” Burtless said.
That, however, wouldn't help Lily Rogers and others who have so far been unable to get unemployment compensation. She said the uncertainty and frustration are taking an emotional toll.
She said she'd gladly forgo the additional $600 in weekly federal money if it meant she could just collect base state unemployment benefits.
For now, all she can do is wait and hope for good news.
“It was hand to mouth before COVID. But now, with no income and unemployment not paid out, it's not even hand to mouth,” Rogers said. “Will we be forgotten?”