Nearly 500,000 PA Workers Will Lose Unemployment Benefits on September 5
All federal unemployment benefits are scheduled to end on September 5, 2021.
490,460 PA workers will be cut off federal unemployment compensation on that date, according to a report by the New Century Foundation.
Nationally, 7.5 million people will lose unemployment benefits.
The following federal programs end the day before Labor Day:
- Pandemic Unemployment Assistant (PUA), which allows traditionally ineligible workers (including gig workers) and others who lost work due to COVID-19 to receive aid.
- Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), which provides $300 per week to supplement the meager unemployment benefits amount provided by states.
- Pandemic Extended Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which grants additional weeks of benefits to those who are still jobless when they exhaust their state benefits (which typically last twenty-six weeks).
In PA, 179,317 long-term unemployed will lose PEUC and 311,143 will lose their PUA benefits on September 5th.
These cutbacks come as moratoriums for evictions and foreclosures are ending and the Delta variant is prolonging the danger from COVID-19.
With the U.S. economy still short 6.5 million jobs as of the end of June 2021, the end of pandemic unemployment benefits will be an abrupt jolt to millions of Americans who cannot find a job in time for this arbitrary end to assistance.
These cuts are coming too early as the unemployment rate (5.9 percent) is still 1.7 times higher than the unemployment rate before the pandemic, 3.5 percent in February 2020.
Black and Latino workers will be hurt the worst, as their unemployment rates remain far higher than that of whites.
Unemployment benefits pump over $6 billion per week into the economy. With the cutoff of benefits, that amount will crash down to $1 billion per week.
The unemployment rate was much lower than now before extended benefits were ended in the past.
We Demand:
Continue Federal unemployment assistance until the end of the year or until the pandemic is under control, allowing work to be available for those displaced by the economy/pandemic.
Prepared by the Philadelphia Unemployment Project – 112 N. Broad St, Floor 11 –
Philadelphia, PA 19102 – 215-557-0822 – www.PhilaUP.org
