Yesterday, it seemed as though the United States government was about to shutdown. Thanks to what must have been some tremendous efforts on the part of a lot of people, the shutdown didn’t happen. However, if it did happen, one of the many things that it would have directly affected would have been unemployment insurance.
Unemployment insurance, as the name implies, is a program from the federal government that enables unemployed American citizens to receive a limited amount of financial benefits for a specific period of time. You cannot apply for it until after you have lost your job.
Then, you must wait to see if you are considered eligible for it. In general, people tend to have to wait weeks for this decision to be made. If you are able to get unemployment insurance, you will usually be expected to continue to look for work, in order to continue to receive benefits. There will come a point when your unemployment insurance will run out, which can be problematic. In the past few years, there were a lot of articles in the news describing times when certain states were holding back on paying people the unemployment insurance benefits that they were supposed to be getting.
What would have happened if the government shut down? The Labor Department issued a memorandum that said that Unemployment Insurance benefits would continue to be paid. The plan was to make sure that some staff were still working, just in case there were problems with borrowing trust fund money from the federal government. This would be important, because 32 states have entirely depleted their own unemployment funds, and are currently borrowing money from the federal government in order to pay people the unemployment insurance benefits that they are eligible for.
Another thing to consider, if the government had shutdown, is the effect it would have on federal workers. It can be reasonably assumed that these workers would be placed on furlough. They would have to go through the process of applying for unemployment, just like everyone else. None of them would be able to file a claim for unemployment insurance until their last day of work, just like everyone else. However, since they would be on furlough, and not completely unemployed, these workers would be considered “job attached”. This means that the federal workers would not be required to look for work while they were receiving their unemployment insurance benefits.
Image of Marcin Wichary on Flickr