Nebraska will no longer participate in the $300 federal COVID-19 unemployment insurance starting June 19.
Photo Credit: Adeolu Eletu of Unsplash
Governor Pete Ricketts announced at his last COVID-19 briefing that the state filed paperwork to the federal government stopping the $300 federal unemployment insurance effective June 19. Those who filed for unemployment last week however, will still receive the extra $300 this month. The state will join 23 other states, all led by Republican Governors withdrawing from the program from mid June through July.
Ricketts said he believes that the $300 a month created a “disincentive for people to go back to work.” The governor says it’s part of his plan to reopen the state and return to normal.
“Ricketts said he believes that the $300 a month created a “disincentive for people to go back to work.”
“We are discontinuing that because we’re returning to normal,” Ricketts said. “And we see that Nebraska has the lowest unemployment rate, we averaged the lowest unemployment rate throughout 2020. We have about 39,000 job openings out there right now on our Nebraska Works website, we’ve got about 15,000 people receiving benefits. So we’ve got more than two jobs for every one person there.”
Ricketts cited precautions taken early on during the pandemic to slow the spread of COVID-19 and preserving the state’s hospital capacity that allows for the state to go back to a sense of normalcy at this time. Nebraska ranks 35th over all in the nation for total covid cases, with thousands of those cases stemming from factory jobs such as meat packing plants.
And this decision to end the added unemployment benefits comes only weeks after a bill that would have provided basic protections for meat packing plant workers failed to pass through the legislature.