$100 million in federal unemployment aid has been sent to NC workers, state says
Federal unemployment benefits have started being paid out in North Carolina, three weeks after Congress and President Donald Trump approved a coronavirus stimulus package with the extra benefits.
North Carolina sent out more than $100 million worth of extra unemployment benefits checks since Tuesday due to the federal money coming in, state officials announced Wednesday afternoon.
That was a few days ahead of schedule; the state hadn’t originally planned to start sending the money out until the end of this week.
The money is only for one type of federal unemployment benefits, however. There are two other programs that still likely won’t start paying out benefits for at least a few more weeks.
A press release from the state unemployment office said it’s “working as quickly as possible to roll out the two remaining federal unemployment programs to ensure timely and accurate payments for eligible North Carolinians.”
As of Tuesday, nearly 600,000 North Carolinians had filed for unemployment since mid-March. That’s more than one-tenth of the entire state workforce.
It also dwarfs the 100,000 per month who were applying for jobless benefits at the height of the Great Recession a decade ago. The unprecedented demand has led to numerous complaints about glitches and delays in the application process.
The state has approved 185,000 people’s applications in the last month, according to officials at the N.C. Department of Employment Security. Their benefits so far come out to $216 million, which includes $116 million from the state and $100 million from the federal government.
The share of federal funding should continue rising. The payments will be retroactive for some people who have lost their jobs. And the federal benefits of $600 per week are more than double what the state pays in unemployment, on average.
What if you don’t qualify for state benefits
The federal benefits being paid out now are from one of three unemployment programs included in the stimulus. Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, or PUC, is for people who are also receiving state unemployment benefits.
The two other types of federal benefits — Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) — haven’t started being paid yet.
People who have been counting on those benefits to pay their bills will likely to have to wait at least a few more weeks.
The PUA benefits are for people who don’t qualify for state benefits, like independent contractors, freelancers and others who are self-employed. The PEUC benefits are for people who have already used up their eligibility for state benefits.
After a lengthy delay, the federal government recently finalized its rules for the PUA program. State officials have said it will require a separate application process that they hope to open by April 25.
The PEUC program has even fewer details.
“A definitive timeline for completing system updates for this program is not yet available,” the department says on its website.
For people who are wondering if they will qualify for any of the federal benefits programs, the state legislature put together a flowchart for unemployment benefits on its website that shows how the process works.
This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 4:13 PM with the headline "$100 million in federal unemployment aid has been sent to NC workers, state says."
