[ad_1]
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Tina Morton recently faced a choice: pay her bills – or buy a birthday present for a child? Derrisa Green is even further behind on the rent. Sylvia Soliz had her power cut.
Unemployment has forced millions of Americans and their families to make painful decisions in the face of a raging viral pandemic that has closed stores and restaurants, crippled travel, and left millions unemployed for months. Now their difficulties are likely to get even worse if Congress does not extend two unemployment programs that will expire on Boxing Day.
If no deal is reached during negotiations on Capitol Hill, more than 9 million people will lose federal unemployment assistance that averages $ 320 a week and is usually their only source of income.
Green, 39, and her husband are among them. The end of their unemployment benefits would force them out of paying the rent on their house in Dyer, Indiana, near Chicago. The couple have eight children. Green’s husband is a self-employed truck driver whose business vanished when the pandemic broke out in the spring. It was not until October that he started working occasionally.
He now receives about $ 235 a week in unemployment assistance. Even so, “all of our bills are overdue,” Green said. They received several utility shutdown notices before they managed to pay just before the service was interrupted.
“It’s really scary,” Green said, “because what are we going to do when we lose the unemployment money?”
The end of unemployment assistance is approaching at a particularly perilous time. Job growth slowed sharply in November and the resurgence of viral cases seems to be getting out of hand across the country.
Even with the prospect of an effective vaccine widely distributed in the coming months, economists say the situation will get worse before it gets better. Many are forecasting a net loss of jobs in December for the first time since April.
President-elect Joe Biden on Friday called on Congress to quickly approve a $ 908 billion bipartisan package that would establish a $ 300 a week jobless allowance, send aid to states and communities, help schools and universities, revive subsidies for companies and support transit systems and airlines. Details are still being worked out, but the outlines of a final bill may appear soon.
Over 20 million people currently receive unemployment benefits. More than half are beneficiaries of two programs that were part of the rescue aid legislation passed by Congress in March. A program made self-employed and contract workers eligible for unemployment assistance for the first time and provided 39 weeks of support. The other program provided 13 weeks of extended benefits out of the 26 weeks that most states provide.
About 9.1 million people who receive assistance from these programs will be cut off on Dec. 26, according to a Century Foundation report. An additional 4.4 million should use up the 39 weeks by the end of the year. If Congress agrees to provide more weeks of aid and revive both programs, those recipients could continue to receive aid next year.
It would be a lifeline for Sylvia Soliz who lives in Corpus Christi, Texas. Soliz, 36, who still owes part of her rent for November and December, has received an eviction notice. She also just had her power cut.
In March, Soliz was fired from her job as a nursing assistant at a facility for the elderly. She now receives $ 414 in unemployment assistance every two weeks. With four children, it doesn’t go very far.
“The day I figured it out, it’s already gone because my kids need so many things,” Soliz said. “Of course, I have to pay part of the bill I have, that way I can stretch it. But every time another check comes in, it’s another bill. “
Soliz applies for a new job and she registers with her former employer. So far, no luck. She is also worried about contracting COVID-19. Soliz is hoping Congress will agree to provide more help, but she feels “they’re basically playing with us.”
A cut to jobless benefits now, with so many millions of Americans still receiving aid, would be unusually early compared to previous recessions. In the aftermath of the great recession of 2008-2009, the government extended unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, and the additional assistance lasted until 2013. When this program ended, around 1.3 million people were left with no more. lost benefits – a small fraction of the number that would lose unemployment assistance this time around.
Other government protections will also expire at the end of this year, including a federal moratorium on evictions for tenants. A suspension of payments on federal student loans will expire at the end of January.
“I am very afraid of people facing homelessness – this is our main concern,” said Andrew Stettner, senior researcher at the Century Foundation. “It’s a terrible political mistake not forced to make. These benefits so soon.
About one in six renters in the United States is behind on their rent, according to a Census Bureau survey. And 12% of adults say their family didn’t have enough to eat at some point in the past week, according to the survey. This is an increase from just 3.7% in 2019, according to the Left Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
A series of heartbreaking choices confronted Keli Paaske, who lives in the Kansas City area. Since being laid off in the spring from her sales job at a fire door manufacturing company, Paaske, 56, has slashed her grocery budget. She thought she would be called back once the virus was gone. But when her boss called in August, it was with a different message: her job had been cut.
Paaske had been reluctant to spend the $ 360 needed to euthanize her 15-year-old dog, who had a brain tumor, before suffering it. Without unemployment assistance, Paaske doesn’t know how she would fare. She can apply for financial help from her parents, who are 80 years old, which she resisted. If she can’t find a job by March, she says, she will stop renting her car.
Across the country, a cut in unemployment assistance would disproportionately affect black Americans, according to data from the Century Foundation. About 18% of those receiving unemployment assistance are blacks, the foundation said, although black Americans make up only 12% of the workforce. Over 57% of recipients are white. Almost 13% are Latinos. (There is no demographic data on about a fifth of recipients.)
Tina Morton was cleaning houses near her home in Winchester, Kentucky. But there has been little work since the start of the pandemic. Like many other single mothers, she struggles to find another job while looking after the children – a son and two nephews in her care – who attend online school at home.
“Single parents can’t go out here and … just find a job,” said Morton, 39. “Here we have our children who are stuck at home.
Last week, Morton had to choose between paying a phone bill and buying a birthday present for one of his nephews. (She gave him a present). If her unemployment assistance ends, she expects to face painful decisions.
She is particularly worried about her two nephews.
“This is what hurts me the most,” she said. “My job is to give them more – to give them better than where they come from.”
___
Rugaber reported from Washington. Editors of AP Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, Andrew Tsubasa Field in Topeka, Kansas, and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn in Louisville, Ky., Contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link