Also, the weekly Department of Labor report on unemployment claims is not providing an accurate estimate of the number of Americans claiming benefits during the pandemic, according to the US Government Accountability Office. That's because of backlogs in processing a historic number of claims, among other data issues.
The shortchanging comes in the temporary Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that Congress created last spring to provide benefits to the self-employed, gig workers, independent contractors and certain people affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
The majority of states have been paying claimants in this program the minimum benefit instead of the amount they are eligible for based on prior earnings, the GAO said. Most states decided to do this initially to get the new program up and running faster, but then did not recalculate benefits based on actual earnings.
The report also highlighted problems with assessing how many people are receiving unemployment benefits during this period of historically high claims. Accurate data is important, especially as lawmakers must decide in coming weeks whether to extend two key pandemic unemployment benefits programs they created in March to respond to the outbreak. The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides an additional 13 weeks of benefits, both expire at the end of the year.
Some 12 million out-of-work Americans could be affected, according to an estimate by The Century Foundation.
The GAO has recommended that the Department of Labor revise its weekly news releases to clarify that the numbers it reports do not accurately estimate the number of Americans claiming benefits, as well as pursue options to report the correct data.
According to the latest weekly report from the Department of Labor, 9.1 million people were collecting Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits and 4.5 million were receiving the extended Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation payments.
"may" - Google News
December 01, 2020 at 03:06AM
https://ift.tt/3fQWZyA
Millions may be getting shortchanged on unemployment benefits, GAO finds - CNN
"may" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3foH8qu
https://ift.tt/2zNW3tO
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Millions may be getting shortchanged on unemployment benefits, GAO finds - CNN"
Post a Comment