Payments ranging from the $300 to $1,800 landed in hundreds of thousands of bank accounts during the last week of September, as part of a temporary federal program to boost unemployment benefits.<\/p>\n
In total, the Lost Wages Assistance program pumped $625 million to Washingtonians who are unemployed, or working reduced hours, during the month of August because of COVID-19.<\/p>\n
It has been more than six months since the pandemic caused unemployment to reach levels far surpassing the Great Recession.<\/p>\n
Between March and September, the Employment Security Department paid out more than $11.3 billion to a million out-of-work Washingtonians — a third of the state’s workforce.<\/p>\n
“We blew away every record imaginable,” agency spokesperson Nick Demerice said.<\/p>\n
But some claims were left pending for months, and some of those are still under review.<\/p>\n
As of press time, 21,000 people are waiting for the state agency to resolve an issue with their claim. A week ago, it was 31,000.<\/p>\n
“For the people who are still waiting, while it’s a relatively small percent of the overall pool of claimants, for them it’s a really difficult situation, and we’re doing everything we can to resolve those claims as quickly as possible,” Demerice said. <\/ins><\/p>\n Demerice and Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine have both long said that with new claims filed each week, there will always be people waiting for resolution.<\/p>\n The goal is to reduce the average wait time to three weeks. Over the summer, it was as low as four. Recently, though, it has risen to 7.8 weeks.<\/p>\n Statewide, 8.4% of workers were unemployed during the month of August.<\/p>\n The number of new claims each week has leveled off in recent months. On average, about 20,000 people are filing their initial unemployment claim each week.<\/p>\n In August and September, the agency shifted staff duties to clear a backlog of appeals from people who were denied benefits.<\/p>\n Since then, 13,000 appeals have been resolved and about 2,000 remain.<\/p>\n “Because of that focus, that meant some of our other queues slowed down a bit,” Demerice said. “But now we can bring those resources back.”<\/p>\n Earlier this week, the state agency announced it will not implement a solvency tax on businesses. Under state law, the agency must issue a 0.2% tax on businesses statewide if the unemployment trust fund dips below a certain threshold.<\/p>\n In avoiding the extra tax, Washington businesses will save an estimated $200 million, according to the agency.<\/p>\n “Having one of the nation’s strongest unemployment trust funds is helping us weather this crisis better than many states,” Commissioner Levine said in a news release. “Coupled with a stronger than expected state revenue forecast last week, this means an improved outlook overall and a break for employers when they most need it.” <\/ins><\/p>\n The fund’s strength also allows the state to avoid taking out federal loans to pay unemployment benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recent Lost Wages Assistance program pumped an extra $625 million to Washington’s unemployed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":628,"featured_media":47543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,24],"tags":[89],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-47542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","category-northwest","tag-coronavirus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/628"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47542"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=47542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}