Biden administration releases new guidelines making previously denied applicants eligible for up to 79 weeks of unemployment. //end headline wrapper ?>Unemployment Insurance Claims Office. Photo by Bytemarks (CC-BY).
Tens of thousands of people in Wisconsin whose applications for COVID-19 pandemic unemployment benefits were denied could be eligible for up to 79 weeks of unemployment payments.
There are three main categories of newly eligible workers:
Those who declined to return to work at a site that wasn’t complying with COVID-19 safety standards, such as requiring face masks and physical distancing.
Those working for an educational institution who became unemployed or partially unemployed after COVID-19 scrambled workers’ schedules.
//end headline wrapper ?>Unemployment Insurance Claims Office. Photo by Bytemarks (CC-BY).
Wisconsin unemployment rate leveled out at 3.8% in March, the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) reported Thursday, but still higher than the state’s pre-pandemic rate a year ago.
While the state’s March jobless rate was well below the national rate of 6%, it was unchanged from February, evidence of a slowing recovery in the battle to come back from the depths of the COVID-19-induced downturn.
In March 2020, just before the widespread layoffs that the pandemic triggered, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was 3.2%.
Wisconsin employers reported 129,000 fewer jobs in March 2021 compared with March 2020, including a deficit of 98,300 jobs in the private sector. Half of the shortfall was in the leisure and hospitality sector, including restaurants, recreation and entertainment, where there were 47,600 fewer positions than a year ago. Education and health care had 18,600 fewer jobs, D
Problems with the unemployment system are a bipartisan failure. And need a bipartisan solution. //end headline wrapper ?>Unemployment Insurance Claims Office. Photo by Bytemarks (CC-BY).
This week after almost a year of delays, the Legislature took a small step in fixing our state’s outdated unemployment compensation system.
The weaknesses in the system were first revealed by the recession last decade. The failures were further exposed by the current covid pandemic and the resulting layoffs, job losses, and forced closure of small businesses.
As a state legislator, I received call after call from the people I represent who struggled with filing an unemployment claim or resolving the claim. These were mainly small business owners, their employees, and self-employed professionals whose businesses were shut down by the pandemic.
Jobless people say DWD call center gives incorrect, contradictory information. //end headline wrapper ?>Unemployment Insurance Claims Office. Photo by Bytemarks (CC-BY).
Dawn Gleason estimates she’s called the state Department of Workforce Development‘s unemployment call center between nine and 12 times since late December.
Gleason, a single mother in Franklin who had breast cancer last year,
lost her job as the manager of a limousine dispatch service in March. She was relying on unemployment insurance to get by until those benefits ran out in December.
On one call to DWD’s help line, Gleason said she was told her new benefits would be paid by the beginning of January. That never came to pass.