Greg's Corner

When should you expect the extra $300 unemployment?

As some of you may know, an executive order was signed recently authorizing a $300 per week federal unemployment benefit. However, not every state will start issuing these payments at the same time. For example, Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri and Utah have all been approved for the additional assistance. Meanwhile, South Dakota has declined the additional assistance claiming that the majority of job losses have been recouped.

Unfortunately, even the states that have been approved won’t be immediately issuing the additional payment. Arizona has stated that they will be sending out the payments this week while many other states may take weeks or even months due to changes that need to be made to their unemployment system. That’s not even taking into consideration the states that haven’t applied to the federal government for the additional assistance. Those states have until September 10th to request for the assistance. Many states have said that the payments will be retroactive once their systems are in place.

The assistance itself is said to last up until December 27th or $44 billion in payments, whichever comes first. That could change if legislation is written that would offer better assistance relief to unemployment recipients.

Even if your state has applied for the new benefit, if your weekly unemployment benefit is less than $100, you will not qualify for the additional payment.

Hopefully, this information helps and you can plan accordingly.

We’d also like to mention that due to the potential confusion over the executive order, scammers may try to take advantage of this confusion like they did with the economic impact payment. Not to mention that you should also keep an eye out for unemployment scams and job scams.

(H/T Forbes)