‘A milestone no one wanted to get to’
Connecticut reaches 1 million unemployment applications
The day before the U.S. Department of Labor is scheduled to give an update on claims nationally for unemployment benefits, Connecticut’s labor commissioner announced his department has now received a million applications for jobless aid since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — “a milestone no one wanted to get to.”
The Connecticut Department of Labor has now paid out $5.2 billion in unemployment compensation across available programs. DOL has applications into the federal government to borrow $550 million through year end to bolster the trust fund it uses to pay out benefits, having tapped $370 million in federal loans to date.
In Connecticut, about 232,000 people are receiving ongoing benefits, with DOL reporting having received 1,007,500 applications since March 13 when Gov. Ned Lamont enacted a public health emergency that shut down many businesses statewide. DOL is now requiring no more than three days to process applications — in the early days of the pandemic the wait time was as much as six weeks — with its contact center handling 20,000 cases a week as of October.
“To put these numbers in perspective, over the past seven months we’ve received more applications than we usually get in eight years,” stated Kurt Westby, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Labor, as quoted in a Thursday afternoon press release. “It speaks to the impact this pandemic has had on every aspect of our lives — public health, the state’s workforce, and the economy.”
Connecticut passed a welcome threshold last week, after the state’s insured unemployment rate fell below 10 percent for the first time since March, with
the federal figure not including more than 50,000 independent workers who became eligible for benefits under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.
On Oct. 4, unemployment compensation beneficiaries could claim an extra $18 a week, pushing to $667 the maximum amount they can claim which is typically half of their average pay prior to losing a job or income stream if self-employed. Entering August, a $600 weekly bonus expired that had been authorized under the CARES Act, with Congress still deadlocked on a possible new aid package with weeks to go before the elections.
Westby urged Connecticut beneficiaries to remain vigilant for fraud, with NBC Connecticut reporting Thursday instances in which some people say their benefits were siphoned off recently into direct deposit accounts outside of their control.