The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
» Unemployment benefits running out as cases rise,
As public health officials warned Friday that the coronavirus posed new risks to parts of the Midwest and South, enhanced federal aid that helped avert financial ruin for millions of unemployed Americans was set to expire — leaving only threadbare safety nets offered by individual states to catch them.
Early in the pandemic, with the economy cratering, the federal government added $600 to weekly unemployment checks. That increase ends this week, and with Congress still haggling over next steps, most states will not be able to offer nearly as much while they wrestle with diminishing unemployment trust funds.
The extra federal aid helped keep Wally Wendt and his family afloat.
Wendt, 54, of Everett, Washington, was laid off from the fitness company where he worked for 31 years. The extra benefits helped him pay for a loan to put a new roof on his house that he took out before the virus struck.
“The politicians need to get their ducks in a row.” Wendt said. “The pressure’s not on them; it’s on all of us blue-collar workers who are struggling to make a living.”
The regular benefits often leave recipients with poverty-level incomes, but at least they’re sure to continue.
Every state offers assistance for at least some unemployed workers based on a portion of their previous earnings. The maximum amounts vary widely, from $235 a week in Mississippi to $1,234 in Massachusetts. The length of time benefits are available ranges from as fewas six weeks in Georgia to up to 28 weeks in Montana. Most states normally cut people off after 26 weeks.
The $600 weekly bonus is set to expire July 31, though this is the last week recipients will get the extra funds.
Aside from the pandemic’s economic damage, the virus itself threatens to overwhelm parts of the country that have been relatively unscathed so far.
White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx warned in a television interview that the surge of cases in the South and Southwest could make its way north. “What started out very much as a Southern and Western epidemic is starting to move up the East Coast, into Tennessee, Arkansas, up into Missouri, up across Colorado,” Birx told NBC’s “Today” show. She implored people to wear masks, wash hands and keep at least 6 feet apart.