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Unemployed Americans will start running out of pandemic unemployment assistance benefits and emergency pandemic unemployment benefits next month. Some 4 million people will have their benefits expire in mid-March, while payments for an additional 7.3 million people will expire in the next four weeks, according to a Century Foundation report released Wednesday.
Democratic lawmakers began unveiling their next relief bill this week, pushing forward President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion proposal. The bill plans to extend unemployment programs – as well as provide a $ 400 weekly increase in federal payments – until Aug. 29.
The House Ways and Means Committee is considering the bill on Wednesday.
The two temporary federal programs were created as part of Congress’ $ 2 trillion relief package last March and were extended by 11 weeks as part of the $ 900 billion relief deal adopted in December. The former offers benefits to freelancers, on-demand workers, freelance contractors and some people affected by the pandemic, while the latter extends the length of payments for those in the state’s traditional unemployment system.
The December package also provides an additional $ 300 per week in federal payments through mid-March. But as Congress and former President Donald Trump waited until the end of the year to act, more than $ 17 billion in unemployment benefits for January has been delayed as states reprogram provisions into their computer systems.
“There is no reason for Congress to wait until the last minute to expand these vital benefits and risk an interruption in aid,” wrote Andrew Stettner, a senior researcher at the foundation, noting that lawmakers should act twice. to four weeks before the middle March deadline to give national unemployment agencies time to process the new rules.
The imminent expiration of benefits comes as the country’s employment recovery remains difficult. Only 49,000 jobs were added in January and the United States is still down by nearly 10 million jobs since before the pandemic. The unemployment rate slipped to 6.3%, the first drop in two months.
Just over 4 million Americans have been out of work for at least six months, which is about 40% of the total number of unemployed.
The number of people employed is not expected to return to its pre-pandemic level until 2024, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released last week.
Yet the unemployment rate in many states has declined since the peak last spring. This means that fewer states offer extended benefits, which kick in when unemployment is high, and this is not good news for the long-term unemployed, who often find it more difficult to return to the workforce. .
According to the Century Foundation, only about 734,000 workers in just 12 states could receive extended benefits in April if the two federal pandemic programs were to expire.
Economic difficulties continue
Almost a year after the start of the pandemic, many Americans are still struggling to cope.
More than 24 million adults, or 11.2%, live in a household where there was sometimes or often not enough food in the past seven days, according to the most recent Census Household Pulse Survey, released Wednesday.
In addition, more than 82 million adults, or more than a third, live in households where it has been somewhat or very difficult to pay the usual household expenses during the pandemic, according to the survey carried out between the 20 January and February 1. .
And nearly 62 million adults, or about a quarter, expect a loss of employment income over the next four weeks.
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