Unemployment checks will increase by $300 in these 41 states

[Yoni Heisler]

• The coronavirus pandemic had devastated the U.S. economy, with some speculating that upwards of 100,000 small businesses have closed permanently as a result.
• The coronavirus pandemic has also caused an unprecedented increase in unemployment claims. With unemployment at an all-time high earlier this year, President Trump back in March approved a $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits. That increase expired in July.
• A new $300 increase in unemployment pay was recently approved by FEMA. States have to apply for the increase and 41 states have been granted approval thus far.

You wouldn't know it by looking at the stock market, but there's no denying that the coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on the U.S. economy. It's been estimated that more than 100,000 businesses have closed since the pandemic began, 16,000 of which are said to be restaurants. Related to that, the number of unemployment claims resulting from the pandemic hit levels the U.S. had never seen before in history. To this point, more than 40 million people were filing for unemployment benefits at the peak of the pandemic. As a point of contrast, the number of weekly unemployment claims in the period before the coronavirus pandemic hovered around 210,000.

As part of a broad effort to inject a bit of life into the economy, President Trump back in March signed off on a $2 trillion stimulus package that included a $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits. The $600 bump provided a much-needed economic boost to millions of Americans but was never designed to last forever and expired at the end of July. Still, with the economy not anywhere close to where it was before the pandemic struck, millions of Americans are still in a position where they're struggling to make ends meet.

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Unemployment checks will increase by $300 in these 41 states originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 2 Sep 2020 at 18:38:52 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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