Oregon Employment Department. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
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An extra $300 for Oregonians receiving unemployment benefits will hopefully be on their way within a matter of weeks.
David Gerstenfeld, acting director of the Oregon Employment Department, laid out the possible timeline for the additional payments during a media call Wednesday. The additional money is part of a new Trump administration program that seeks to supplement unemployment benefits after a $600 additional payment approved by Congress expired last month.
Gerstenfeld said that he’s unsure how long the added benefit will last, but he expects it to run for about three to five weeks. The new benefit will be paid for by federal disaster funds, which he noted could be depleted by natural disasters, such as fires and hurricanes
If approved for the additional funds, he said that benefits will be paid retroactively to the week ending Aug. 1. But making the payments will require reworking the state’s programs and Gerstenfeld wasn’t sure when the payments will be made.
“It won’t be tomorrow, I can say that safely,” he said. “We hope that we’re looking at a few weeks, but we’re really not certain.”
The department has been swamped with unemployment claims since the start of the pandemic. He said that between March 15 and Aug. 22, the department received 552,600 claims for regular unemployment insurance benefits. During the same time period last year, the department saw about 63,900 claims.
Gerstenfeld said that the department has made progress in clearing the backlog and the oldest application that hasn’t been processed is from Aug. 10. He said that the department has paid out $4 billion in benefits between mid-March and early August.
“So that certainly has been a huge factor in stopping a further decline in economic activity in the state,” he said.
However, he said that tens of thousands of claims remain in adjudication, meaning they require additional verification before they can be paid.
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Contact reporter Jake Thomas at 503-575-1251 or [email protected] or @jakethomas2009.
