Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images
States issued $794 billion in combined state and federal unemployment benefits from March 2020 through July 2021, according to a U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman.
That sum is far higher than during any other period in history, according to labor experts.
It’s tough to draw direct comparisons, due to the different time scales of economic downturns. For an example, we can examine 2009, the year in which unemployment peaked during the Great Recession, which before the pandemic had been the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression.
The jobless received $128 billion in total unemployment benefits in 2009, according to an Urban Institute analysis. By comparison, the jobless had gotten $637 billion — five times as much — about a year after the CARES Act became law, according to The Century Foundation.
CARES Act policies aimed to replace a big chunk of lost paychecks as laid-off workers were asked to stay home to reduce the virus’ spread.
“We had a lot of people we wanted to stay home,” said Betsey Stevenson, an economics and public policy professor at the University of Michigan. “We also had lots of people lose jobs right away.”
The law temporarily raised the amount of weekly benefits, by $600 a week and then $300 a week at various points thereafter. Those infusions essentially doubled or tripled the average weekly benefit.
It expanded aid to millions of people, like the self-employed and gig workers,…
