Millions Could Lose Unemployment Benefits The Day After Christmas

ACROSS AMERICA — About 12 million Americans could lose unemployment benefits the day after Christmas, when two programs of the federal CARES Act are set to expire. Research released this week from Andrew Stettner and Elizabeth Pancotti of The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, shows how many Americans could enter the New Year with little or no financial support.

CARES Act programs expiring on Dec. 26 are the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that provides benefits to 7.3 million workers and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program that offers aid to another 4.6 million. The $600 per week benefit for workers who went unemployed due to coronavirus-related restrictions expired at the end of July.

The researchers have called the looming Dec. 26 expirations a “benefits cliff” unless additional coronavirus relief aid is passed by Congress before then.

“Nobody is talking about this,” Stettner told The Washington Post. “We’re just careening into this huge cliff and it’s like it’s not even happening. People are just totally, completely ignoring the situation at a time when things are getting worse before they’re going to get better in terms of public health. And that just really is going to constrain people’s ability to get a job when benefits run out.”

Political analysts have said if a new relief bill does get passed during the “lame duck” congress, before new representatives take their seats in January, it won’t be anything close to the $2.2 trillion package Democrats are looking for.

Black workers and communities of color are at a particularly high risk, The Century Foundation study shows. The share of unemployment insurance claimants who were Black rose by 40 percent from April to September.

“This cutoff threatens to pull the rug out from under an economy that has already seen millions of workers lose their state unemployment benefits this fall,” the report states. “Most workers began collecting state unemployment benefits in March or April, and since these benefits typically max out at twenty-six weeks, these workers’ benefits are already coming to an end.”

Patch has reached out to The Century Foundation.

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