Federal jobless benefits ending

Last week for extra $300 in Florida

A federal program that funneled $300 in supplemental unemployment benefits to those thrown out of work due to COVID-19 is ending in Florida almost as quickly as it started.

In an announcement late Monday, Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity said it had received U.S. approval to provide a fourth and final round of $300 in weekly payments to qualified unemployed Floridians under a so-called Lost Wages Assistance program.

The DEO said it has sent out payments to eligible Floridians for the weeks ending Aug. 1, 8 and 15. The final payment will be made for the week ended Aug. 22.

Without the federal money, unemployed Floridians will be left with no benefits except those from the state, which top out at $275 a week, one of the lowest rates in the nation.

The federal program, authorized in an executive order signed by President Trump, drew on a pool of $44 billion in disaster relief money controlled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It was designed to continue some federal jobless assistance after a program providing $600 a week in benefits expired in late July.

But the money is quickly running out, according to published reports, and a number of states that joined the program before Florida are being notified by FEMA that their allocations are about to expire.

At the same time, FEMA announced that it would underwrite up to six weeks of payments to all 50 states.

“States should plan to make payments to eligible

claimants for no more than six weeks from the week ending Aug. 1, 2020,” FEMA said in an email to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

“Regardless of where the states and territories are in their process to receive and distribute the FEMA funding, FEMA will fund six weeks in $300 supplemental unemployment benefits to every state and territory that has applied for this assistance by Sept. 10.”

The state DEO did not immediately respond to a question Tuesday as to why it is ending the payments after only four weeks.

According to the DEO’s claims and payments dashboard, more than $15.9 billion in state and federal benefits have been paid to more than 1.9 million outof-work Floridians since mid-March, when the pandemic struck down the economy. But the dashboard does not break out figures for payments made under the Lost Wages Assistance program. More than $11.2 billion in jobless benefits have flowed from Washington to the state’s unemployed during the pandemic, according to the agency’s calculations.

Now, it is unclear whether any further jobless aid will come from the federal government prior to the presidential election in early November.

During an interview Tuesday on CNBC, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she is still opposed to Republican efforts to pass a smaller version of her party’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus plan.

Trump created the temporary lost wage program after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to hammer out a deal to extend or replace the $600 payments, which were authorized under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act passed by lawmakers and signed into law by Trump in late March.

LYNNE SLADKY/AP Unemployed workers are hunting for new jobs, with many being offered by retailers and hospitality businesses.