Jobless may get up to 19 weeks of payments

Florida is preparing to add to the number of weeks the unemployed can collect state jobless benefits, but the change won’t take place until Jan. 1, 2021, officials said Friday.

The additional weeks would lift the maximum from 12 — one of the lowest payout periods in the nation — to potentially 19 weeks, the Department of Economic Opportunity said. There would be no change in the maximum $275 a week benefit.

Who would be eligible?

As with most everything else in the state’s complex unemployment insurance system, eligibility depends on a variety of factors.

If an unemployed individual’s “year-end date” from his or her 2020 state claim has passed, the person “may be eligible to establish a new benefit year,” said DEO spokeswoman Paige Landrum.

In addition, individuals must have worked

between their prior claims for state unemployment and their new 2021 application. They must also have “earned at least three times their weekly benefit amount.”

The person also would have to be “monetarily eligible” under state law and not have a “disqualifying separation” from their previous employment such as quitting a job.

The time formula

Under state law, the additional weeks are arrived at by calculating the three-month jobless rate average for July, August and September of this year. An additional week is added “for each 0.5 percentage point increment in the statewide average unemployment rate above 5%,” the agency said.

That places the average jobless rate at 8.7%, which would result in the addition of 7 weeks of additional benefits, the agency said. The rates for each of those three months were 11.4%, for July, 7.3% for August and a preliminary 7.6% for September.

The final September number will be calculated on Nov. 20, when state statisticians make a final seasonal adjustment of the month’s jobless figures.

The current maximum of 12 weeks was based on a statewide average unemployment rate at 5% or below.

Florida adopted the formula when the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011 made it harder for out-of-work people to get unemployment insurance and cut the payments to among the lowest in the nation.

Federal program still available

Those whose state benefits have run out this year can still apply for a federally-funded program that ends in December.

Known as Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, the program was established as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act in March. It provides an additional 13 weeks of state-level benefits. Access to the federal program is not automatic. Floridians who exhausted their original 12 weeks of state benefits need to apply through the Department of Economic Opportunity.

According to department figures, at least 615,553 Floridians are still enrolled in the federal program. They got in because they exhausted their original state-funded benefits and still haven’t returned to work.