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President Joe Biden and the Democrats of Congress hope to pass on $ 1.9 trillion in additional pandemic emergency relief, including additional unemployment benefits.
Yet many unemployed workers have not yet received benefits from the latest stimulus package, signed by former President Trump more than a month ago.
States such as California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana and Virginia have not provided that assistance to some groups of workers, according to their respective unemployment agencies.
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The $ 900 billion bailout, passed in late December, extended unemployment benefits by 11 weeks and increased wages by $ 300 a week.
Many states have provided that assistance to employees in stages, while adapting their systems to take into account different pieces of legislation.
As a result, some groups have waited longer than others.
“The complexity of some of the additional specifications is challenging to program and will be a greater burden, not just for us [unemployment insurance] staff, as well as for plaintiffs, ”Mark Butler, Georgia’s labor commissioner, said in January.
Some of those updates are underway, the Georgia Department of Labor said in a tweet on Tuesday.
Biden’s plan would extend unemployment benefits through September and increase wages by $ 400 a week.
Depleted unemployment benefits
Delays appear to be most common among workers who have received benefits since early spring and have “exhausted” their aid – meaning they are reaching the maximum number of weeks allowed under the CARES Act.
That federal law limited the duration of aid through two temporary programs: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which pays benefits to the self-employed and others not eligible for typical state aid, and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provided additional weeks of state benefits. to the long-term unemployed.
It seems that it took longer to restart their benefits than for other employees who had not yet reached their maximum number of weeks.
Colorado, for example, on Monday began providing aid to workers – with the exception of workers who had depleted PUA and PEUC benefits.
According to a post on the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment website, the date for that “Phase 2 rollout” has not yet been set.
According to a spokesperson for the Employment Development Department, who has not offered a timeline for system updates, Californians who exhausted benefits are facing a similar situation.
Virginia and Hawaii began paying those who exhausted PUA benefits, but not those who ran out of PEUC benefits for the long-term unemployed.
Hawaii will soon start paying for those benefits, said William Kuntsman, a spokesman for the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. He did not provide a specific timeline.
Virginia officials originally planned to pay the payments on Jan. 29. However, according to the Employment Commission website, “the implementation date has changed”. A spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
The $ 900 billion pandemic relief package created additional requirements for some workers to continue to receive aid. For example, PUA recipients must provide documents to prove their self-employment. (The time frame differs for new applicants and those who collected.)
Indiana officials will start paying PUA benefits once these requirements are met. Those “vouchers” were made available to workers in the state from January 29, according to the Department of Workforce Development.
“The additional requirements must be integrated before eligible payments can be released,” Butler said of Georgia.
They include more stringent identification verification requirements, a new mechanism for employers to report refusal to work and absenteeism to return to work by employees, and additional fraud detection measures, he said.