[ad_1]
Oregon said Monday it had finally started paying $ 176 million in federal benefits the state withheld from laid-off workers for eight months.
The so-called “waiting week” benefits are expected to flow to 246,000 Oregonians over the next three days, appearing on debit cards, direct deposit accounts or checks. They will cost an average of $ 715 each, although the amount of payments varies widely.
Another 170,000 people will have to continue to wait for their payments, perhaps until the end of January. It is not known how much money will come to them.
The Oregon Department of Employment says workers don’t have to do anything more to receive their money. Payments will equal one week of benefits – including the federal bonus of $ 600 for people who had a spring waiting period through late July and a bonus of $ 300 for those who had their week of waiting from the end of July to the beginning of September.
“The Oregonians have been patient with us and we thank them,” David Gerstenfeld, acting director of the department, said Monday.
The saga of the weeks of waiting has been one of the most painful in a succession of employment service failures this year. Oregon is the latest state to pay federal wait week money, which covers the first week people are out of work. Most other states paid benefits several months ago.
Overwhelmed by a wave of claims at the start of the pandemic last spring, the employment department was in disarray and defiantly refused to pledge to ever pay Oregonians federal money. Governor Kate Brown turned the tide under pressure from the state’s congressional delegation and subsequently sacked the former department head.
However, the ministry took months to adapt its obsolete computer systems in order to pay this money. The state faced a Congressional year-end deadline to start making payments, or it risked losing federal money.
That risk has passed, the ministry said last week, but unemployed people on extended benefit programs and workers whose employers participated in the state’s Workshare program may have to wait up to two months. more. The ministry said last week that these workers would receive their full benefits, even if the money does not arrive until after the new year.
“We know that some applicants still have to wait to receive their payments, and we want them to know that we are working hard to get their funds to them as quickly as possible,” Gerstenfeld said Monday.
Workers are generally not eligible for benefits the first week they are not working. Congress funded a waiver for that first week as part of the coronavirus relief bill passed last March. (Self-employed workers and entrepreneurs who received benefits this year under the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program have not had a waiting week and will not receive additional benefits now.)
“I will continue to press the ministry to promptly distribute all qualifying wait week checks and resolve the stuck in arbitration claims of thousands of Oregonians so that they too can enjoy the benefits they are getting.” are entitled, ”said US Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said Monday in a statement. He was among those who urged the employment department to pay for the waiting week last spring and then led the call for agency reform.
Wyden said on Wednesday he wanted to see federal legislation extend benefits to other workers until 2021.
Oregon’s unemployment rate peaked at 14.9% in April. The labor market has improved considerably since then, with unemployment falling to 6.9% in April. But there are still 137,000 Oregonians out of work and with coronavirus infection rates at historic levels, the employment department said another 51,000 jobs were at risk as the state entered a “freeze” of two. weeks intended to contain the epidemic.
Oregon paid more than $ 5.6 billion in unemployment benefits during the pandemic, more in the past eight months than in the previous nine years combined. And while new complaints are now dealt with promptly, tens of thousands of old complaints still go unresolved.
The wait week’s money is finally on its way, but about 20,000 other Oregon residents are waiting for their claims to be resolved through a bureaucratic process called arbitration. Some have been waiting for months. Tens of thousands more may also be awaiting payment and may need their claim to be adjudicated.
In addition, as many as 70,000 Oregonians can lose their unemployment benefits on Boxing Day, when an extended benefit program and the self-employed program expire.
Note: The Oregonian has put its journalists on leave for a week earlier in the pandemic. They, like other Oregonians on leave, are eligible for wait week payments.
– Mike Rogoway | [email protected] | Twitter: @rogoway |
[ad_2]
Source link