From today’s CNBC News Online:
The $2 trillion coronavirus relief package President Donald Trump signed into law Friday significantly expands unemployment benefits for out-of-work Americans.
The law pays laid-off and furloughed workers an extra $600 a week, for up to four months, and extends existing state benefits by 13 weeks. It also offers jobless benefits to previously ineligible groups, such as gig workers and freelancers. Nearly 3.3 million people filed first-time claims for unemployment last week — shattering the previous record, set in 1982, by around 2.6 million people, according to the Labor Department.
“It truly is, in a lot of ways, a very generous package,” said Chris Moran, a partner in the labor and employment practice group at law firm Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia. Yet, some could receive smaller payments than others or miss out entirely. Here are some of those groups.
Tip workers
Workers who derive a big chunk of their paychecks from tips, like waiters and bartenders, may get smaller unemployment checks than they hope to. It largely depends on whether an employer reports those tips as income. States determine the size of unemployment checks based on a worker’s prior wages, generally over the last four quarters.
Gig, self-employed workers without pay records
While gig and self-employed workers are newly eligible for unemployment benefits, they may not qualify if they don’t have the proper work and pay documentation. This will largely depend on forthcoming guidance from the Labor Department about the kinds of acceptable documentation, and states’ interpretation of that guidance — currently among the biggest wild cards in the unemployment expansion, experts said.
Read the complete article here.