The pandemic’s $ 794 billion unemployment benefits were historic. here’s why

States paid out $ 794 billion in combined federal and state unemployment benefits from March 2020 to July 2021, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Labor.

This sum is much higher than at any time in history, according to labor experts.

Direct comparisons are difficult, due to the different timescales of economic downturns. For example, we can look at 2009, the year unemployment peaked during the Great Recession, which before the pandemic was the worst US recession since the Great Depression.

The unemployed received a total of $ 128 billion in unemployment benefits in 2009, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute. By comparison, the unemployed got $ 637 billion – five times as much – about a year after the CARES Act came into effect, according to the Century Foundation.

CARES law policies were aimed at replacing much of the lost paychecks, as laid-off workers were urged to stay at home to reduce the spread of the virus.

“We had a lot of people that we wanted to stay at home,” said Betsey Stevenson, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. “We also had a lot of people who lost their jobs right away.”

The law temporarily increased the amount of weekly benefits from $ 600 per week and then $ 300 per week at various times thereafter. These infusions essentially doubled or tripled the average weekly profit.

It has extended aid to millions of people, such as the self-employed and temporary workers, who were previously not eligible for traditional state unemployment insurance. The long-term unemployed also received weeks of additional federally funded benefits when they ran out of state aid.

The $ 794 billion issued through July 2021 includes:

• Premium payments ($ 300 and $ 600 per week): $ 418 billion
• State unemployment insurance: $ 167 billion
• Unemployment assistance in the event of a pandemic (for concert workers): $ 122 billion
• Emergency Pandemic Unemployment Benefit (for the long-term unemployed): $ 75 billion
• Extended benefits (for the long-term unemployed): $ 12 billion.

According to labor experts, determining the number of unique people who received benefits during the pandemic is an administrative challenge. The Department of Labor does not collect this data from states, according to a spokesperson.

A year after the start of the pandemic, up to 46.2 million people had received at least one week of benefits, or about 1 in 4 workers, according to an estimate by the Century Foundation.

This projection includes 15.5 million people who received at least one week of pandemic unemployment assistance (for self-employed and concert workers), who had never previously been eligible for UI benefits. nationwide.

“You could certainly say [unemployment benefits] unambiguously reached a lot more people because they changed the coverage, ”said Julia Lane, an economist and professor at New York University, of lawmakers’ expansion of the CARES Act.

By comparison, 14.5 million Americans received at least one benefit payment in 2009, less than a third of the annual pandemic total, according to the Century Foundation analysis. And 5 million did so in the 12 months before the start of the pandemic.

Another way to assess the extent of receipt of benefits is the “total number of weeks paid for”. It measures the number of weekly benefits paid.

It is not an exact measure of the number of individuals, as it does not control the duration. (For example, 10 weeks of benefits paid could mean that one person received assistance for 10 weeks, or that 10 people each received for a week.)

There were around 1.5 billion total weeks compensated from March 2020 to July 2021, according to the Ministry of Labor.

The sum includes:

• Unemployment assistance in the event of a pandemic: 609 million weeks
• Regular state benefits: 555 million weeks
• Emergency unemployment benefit in the event of a pandemic: 251 million weeks
• Extended benefits: 34 million weeks

By comparison, about 400 million weekly payments were issued in 2009, about half of those paid in the first year of the pandemic, according to The Century Foundation.

The pandemic total is also likely underestimated, as some states have not submitted regular data for pandemic unemployment assistance, according to the Department of Labor.

About half of U.S. states ended their participation in some or all federal unemployment programs in June or July, before they officially expired over the weekend, limiting the scope of payments.