Extra $600/ Week In Unemployment Ends With July

Right now, there are millions of Americans on unemployment due to the pandemic. That extra $600 / week has been helping many people keep their homes and lifestyles while being forced to wait out the pandemic. The extra money even helped those who wouldn’t normally be eligible for benefits like independent contractors and small business owners.

At the end of the month, all of the programs offered by the CARES act will end and it is very unlikely that Congress will pass another bill before that happens.

Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, said:

“The people who are unemployed and getting $600, they’re going to fall off a cliff. The median benefit in a state like Mississippi is around $212 a week. In Arizona, the maximum benefit is $240 a week. So people are going to go from $840 to $240 overnight.”

In addition to this, there are many jobs that people can’t go back to. Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate said:

“These people aren’t going to be able to pay their rent anymore. Their landlords won’t be able to get money,” he said. “They’re going to spend less money on groceries. The grocery store is going to hurt. We know that broadly we’ve recaptured only about a third of the jobs that have been lost overall, and the reality is that the longer this persists, and it will undoubtedly persist for a while to come, there is a high likelihood that more and more of these individuals will be unemployed in the longer term.”

Source:
ABC