Posted on September 8, 2020
I have three points and three charts about recent payments of unemployment benefits:
- Total federal plus state unemployment benefit payments are moving up again after dropping sharply in the first part of August, following expiration of the extra $600 per week federal benefit (see first chart below).
- Benefits are moving up because more states are getting certified and are beginning to pay out to qualifying unemployed individuals the extra $300 weekly federal benefit–on top of state benefits that have largely not changed–as directed in the President’s executive action of August 8 (see second chart below). Those $300 weekly payments are paid by FEMA but are effectively unemployment benefits.
- The amounts authorized by the President’s executive action to be spent are very limited. By our tabulation of amounts reported by the U.S. Treasury Department in its Daily Treasury Statements, already about $5 billion has been disbursed by FEMA, out of a maximum of $44 billion authorized (see third chart below, which is basically just those two numbers in visual form). The available FEMA funds (from the Department of Homeland Security’s Disaster Relief Fund) look to quickly run out when more states start disbursing benefits that include the extra FEMA payment, including retroactive amounts for individuals back to the end of July.
