San José, CA – On Saturday, June 12, four Republican-led states cut off three federal unemployment benefit programs. These were the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation or FPUC which provides a $300 per week supplement to regular benefits, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA for self-employed and gig workers, and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation or PEUC, for the longer-term unemployment who state benefits have run out. This means that 370,000 who have lost work in Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi and Missouri will be losing their benefits starting next week.
San José, CA – On Saturday, June 12, four Republican-led states cut off three federal unemployment benefit programs. These were the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation or FPUC which provides a $300 per week supplement to regular benefits, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA for self-employed and gig workers, and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation or PEUC, for the longer-term unemployment who state benefits have run out. This means that 370,000 who have lost work in Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi and Missouri will be losing their benefits starting next week.
$1.9 trillion COVID relief is badly needed, but more needs to be done
San José, CA – This past week, on March 11, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, and White House passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue law without the support of a single Republican in the House or the Senate. The law provides much-needed relief for millions of people whose finances have been wounded by the pandemic. Yet much more needs to be done, especially in the fight against the growing economic inequality.
San José, CA – On Thursday, October 15, the U.S. Department of Labor reported the biggest one week increase in new claims for unemployment insurance since late July. The latest report for the week ending October 10 saw 898,000 new claims for regular state unemployment insurance, up 53,000 from the week before.
Nearly three times as high as the pre-pandemic record
San José, CA – On Thursday, June 4 the federal Department of Labor reported that 1.9 million new claims for state unemployment insurance or UI benefits were filed in the week ending May 30. This was down by 250,000 claims from the previous week, continuing the slow decline in new applications. However, this was still more than two and a half times higher than the previous pre-pandemic record of almost 700,000 claims made during the deep 1981-82 recession.
