Nearly 300 state employees erroneously received unemployment benefits totaling $6.7 million and averaging $23,700 per employee during the last two pandemic years, the Georgia Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported Wednesday.
Enhanced unemployment benefits launched during the pandemic expire next week, cutting a vital lifeline for millions of jobless Americans. Research suggests most will not find work right away.
Republican governors are moving to end $300-a-week pandemic payments for the unemployed in a controversial effort to push people back to work. Four states are set to end them this week.
Gov. Brian Kemp is planning to end enhanced unemployment benefits from the federal government. As of June 26, the maximum weekly benefit will be cut by $300. Georgia is one of 17 states to stop federal benefits designed to help out-of-work residents during the pandemic. GPB’s Ellen Eldridge reports.
If Congress doesn't compromise and pass another relief bill, a new study finds a staggering number of Americans will lose a critical financial lifeline as the pandemic worsens.
Many unemployed Americans have been tapping into their savings to pay bills. But those savings are going fast, and hopes for a new round of pandemic relief before the election are fading.
The expiration of emergency jobless benefits is draining $15 billion a week from the U.S. economy. President Trump has offered to replace half that money, but states have been slow to accept.
One expert told NPR that the unemployment measure is particularly controversial because it is "using appropriated funds by Congress in ways that Congress might not have intended."
Gov. Ron DeSantis says the portal was designed to frustrate users, "so people just say, oh, the hell with it, I'm not going to do that." Florida has been among the slowest states to process claims.
The $600 weekly pandemic unemployment payments have single-handedly changed the economic equation in America as people earn more staying home than they did in the jobs they lost.
