300 dollar federally enhanced unemployment benefits will be sent out to qualifying unemployment recipients Wednesday.
Louisiana Workforce Commission Secretary Ava Dejoie says this first payment is retroactive to August 1st, so expect a much larger than usual payment Wednesday.
“We are paying for the weeks ending 8-1, 8-8, and 8-15, and it may be one nine-hundred or three three-hundred dollar payments,” says Dejoie.
Starting next week the enhanced benefits will only be an additional 300 dollars a week on top of what you already receive from the state.
Dejoie says over 400,000 people will receive the benefits, but about 87,000 unemployed will not qualify, most of them because they don’t earn enough in-state benefits.
“If anyone has a maximum weekly benefit under 100 dollars they are not eligible for this 300 dollar plus-up,” says Dejoie.
Dejoie says that decision was a Labor Department ruling, and not a state decision.
About 20,000 receive over 100 a week from the state but are ineligible because they did not mark down that their unemployment is COVID-related. Dejoie says it could be an oversight on their part.
“They just went in and filled the application out and maybe just went through the questions. We are sending those people an email,” says Dejoie.
The benefits are being funded by FEMA emergency response dollars, and Governor Edwards projects that pot will last about five to six weeks.
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