Ball State economist foresees lengthy recovery; state launches added $600 payment
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — No one dining inside restaurants. Businesses temporarily closed.Thousands of Hoosiers thrown out of work and forced to apply for unemployment benefits.
“I’ve tried to call (Indiana’s Workforce Development) for two days. I’ve gotten two people to respond, then it hangs up on me. Pretty much for hours, I’ve been waiting and I still haven’t resolved my issue. But they’re working on it, I’m sure,” Alina Izaguirre told News 8.
New data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows 5.2 million Americans filed initial jobless claims last week.That’s down from 6.6 million a week earlier.
Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, told News 8 on Friday, ”The good news is that the explosion in job losses that we saw in the first half of April seems to be slowing down a bit.”
In the past four weeks, just over 444,000 Hoosiers filed new claims for unemployment, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That means 13.5% of Hoosiers who were working in February have lost their jobs in the coronavirus pandemic.
Hicks said Indiana has not yet bottomed out of those job losses.
“There are still jobs being destroyed. People are still applying for benefits, and that’s going to continue for several weeks.”
So, what’s next? Hicks said there’s evidence that transmission of COVID-19 has slowed in Indiana, but “my suspicion is there’s going to be a very lengthy period of time before businesses are fully comfortable opening, and customers are ready to go back into restaurants, hotels and motels, and movie theaters to do what they would normally do there.”
Indiana Department of Workforce Development told News 8 it’s processing unemployment claims as fast as possible.
Bob Birge, chief communications officer for Workforce Development, told News 8 on Friday, “A reminder that it takes approximately 21 days from a successful application to the first payments to start. That process has worked well from the beginning and continues to work well.”
Birge said some good news arrived Thursday about the $600 available from the Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (PUC) program, part of the $2.2 trillion, federal stimulus package called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
The $600 payment program “was successfully launched last night, and that additional $600, which will go on top of the regular amount for those receiving benefits, will start to kick in next week. And, the first PUC payment will be retroactive to March 29 in most cases,” Birge said.
He added, “Last, we also announced yesterday that the PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance) programs, also part of the CARES Act — for the self-employed, contractors, gig workers, etc., a whole new system with its own requirements that must be built from the ground up — now has target dates established the week of April 24 for applications, and the week of May 4 for payments to begin.”