NC unemployment payments will start to go out this week for COVID-19 related claims
North Carolinians will start to receive payments this week for their unemployment claims filed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order on March 17 loosening restrictions on filing unemployment claims. Since then, about 270,000 unemployment claims have been filed, most of which are related to COVID-19, the governor’s office reported Sunday. Before the order, only about 7,500 claims were filed in the first two weeks of March.
One of the changes in the order was lifting the requirement that people must be actively searching for a new job. Many employees were laid off when restaurants and bars were ordered to close except for take out and delivery. Cooper said at the time that he knows that “many employers will want to hire their employees back when this pandemic subsides.”
“Thousands of workers have lost jobs, but their bills don’t stop,” Cooper said in a news release Sunday. “My administration is working overtime to get unemployment checks out now. We’ll keep pushing every day for more state and federal help to save our workers and their families,” he said.
Cooper told the Division of Employment Security to start implementing the unemployment insurance provisions in the federal CARES Act on Saturday. The state is waiting for the federal government to tell it later this week how to make changes including allowing an additional $600 in unemployment benefits. Once they receive that, the state expects those payments to start two weeks later.
To get unemployment payments, workers have to fill out certifications every week through their online Division of Employment Security accounts at des.nc.gov.
A statewide stay-at-home directive starts Monday at 5 p.m. Several communities have already issued stay-at-home orders, including Wake County, Durham and Mecklenburg County.
This story was originally published March 29, 2020 at 3:14 PM with the headline "NC unemployment payments will start to go out this week for COVID-19 related claims."
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