Hi everyone, this is Dr. Nitin Chhoda. In this important episode of Ignition Time
I'm going to give you a detailed guide to the minimum and maximum weekly
unemployment benefits. Now this is such a detailed video. This took me so much time
to prepare for that I'm actually going to have to split this video into 2
parts. So this is essentially part 1 of a 2-part video because there's just so
much information that I need to deliver and I try to keep it simple and easy to
understand. So in this video I'm going to talk about THREE things. The state
specific variations between the minimum and the maximum benefit amounts. Number
2, I'm going to talk to you about the concept of the recipiency rate. I bet no
one's ever talked to you about this and it's an extremely important thing for
you to be aware of if you're getting unemployment benefits. And number 3,
I'm going to display and show you the range of state unemployment benefits and
I think you're going to be extremely surprised when you take a look at the
weekly minimum and the maximum range across several states across the country.
So let's go ahead and get started. The state specific variations between the
minimum and the maximum benefit amounts - before I get started if you learn
something new from this video, please click the like button. If you're not a
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if you click the like button or if you subscribe. So let's get started. If you're
filing for unemployment benefits you're going to have a very different
experience, very different benefit depending on which state you live in. The
duration of the benefit and how much money you get every week is going to be
different and your experience is going to vary depending on where you live in
the country. Now I have done another video on the duration of benefits and on
states that are offering extensions of weekly unemployment benefits. So before
you watch this video, I recommend you watch 2 other videos on my channel. One
is "The difference between the benefits that are expiring
benefits that have been extended state specific extensions" and number 2,
definitely check out the video on "Which states are extending benefits" because I
have done detailed videos on states extending benefits that specifically I'm
talking about the duration of benefits that have been extended. In this video
I'm specifically going to talk about the weekly dollar amount. In other words the
amount of the benefit. Again, the duration of the benefit is something I have
covered in other videos. So if you're applying for unemployment benefits you
basically have TWO questions - How much will I get? And how long will I get it?
Well how much you get depends on your state. Now the average weekly
unemployment benefit according to the US Labor Department this was for the year
2019 is $378 a week in unemployment benefits.
Now this is not taking into consideration the $600 a week federal
booster which was implemented with the Cares Act which is due to end at towards
the end of July pending any further legislation, pending any further
extension from the house and the Senate, pending any further laws that are passed.
so at the moment I am recording this video we don't have any specific
information about that yet now before the $600 week F PUC payment actually
kicked in different states provided different extensive benefits for example
Mississippi which was the least generous state on average in the past it paid two
hundred and thirteen dollars a week and Massachusetts the most generous state
paid five hundred and fifty five dollars a week on average this means that the
typical jobless person in Massachusetts receives approximately fourteen hundred
dollars more per month than the average person in Mississippi so that was the
prior status quo with the $600 week federal booster the average worker in
Mississippi now receives approximately eight hundred and thirteen dollars a
week and the average worker in Massachusetts receives approximately one
thousand one hundred and fifty-five dollars a week but it's important to
keep in mind that the average payments do not reflect the full picture because
every state has both a floor and a ceiling a minimum benefit payout for a
week and a maximum benefit payout per week now prior to the Kerr's Act there
were some states like Hawaii which had a minimum weekly unemployment
payment of as low as $5 a week yep I said $5 a week and there were other
states like Washington State which had minimum weekly unemployment payouts of
188 dollars a week now since this pandemic happened since the chaos Act
was passed states are now paying more and on top of that there's a $600 week
federal booster the FPU see payment so what does that mean in a state like
Hawaii for example the five dollar minimum weekly unemployment payment is
now approximately seven hundred and fourteen dollars a week so imagine going
from $5 minimum to 714 dollars a week minimum
that's a 17,000 percent increase in weekly payments in fact let's take a
look at this chart on your screen right now which is the minimum unemployment
benefits the minimum weekly unemployment benefits that individuals should now be
getting with the $600 a week federal booster which again at the time I'm
making this video is scheduled to end towards the end of July pending any
further legislation that gets passed that leads to an extension so unless
that happens it's scheduled to end at the end of July so take a look at this
chart on your screen right here you can see that the highest weekly minimums are
in Massachusetts 878 dollars Hawaii 867 dollars Washington 846
dollars not Decorah 841 dollars and Minnesota 839 dollars the lowest weekly
minimums are in Puerto Rico 682 dollars Mississippi 707 dollars Louisiana and
Alabama also in that range 708 714 dollars in Arizona just 717 dollars a
week now keep in mind these are the minimum weekly payments that
unemployment recipients would get with the passage of the qez Act now I will
cover all of these numbers in more detail for all states across the country
along with retroactive dates in part 2 of this video because it would have been
too much to put into one video so definitely make sure you subscribe to
the channel so you get notified as soon as that video is released so make sure
you subscribe and notifications to get that information so
let's talk about duration of benefits have also discussed this in a lot of
detail in another video where I talk about states extending unemployment
benefits so you definitely want to check that out on the channel as well but
basically on average states offer benefits for 26 weeks then the 13 week
PE UC extension the federal extension kicks in and then states offer extended
unemployment benefits beyond that during periods of high unemployment which
basically is happening for over 40 states at the time I am recording this
video some states such as Florida and North Carolina have a very low
unemployment duration right around 12 weeks or lower you can check the state's
website for specific information and I'll be giving you a detailed breakdown
and many resources for you to be able to get more information about this in part
two of this video so now the concept of the recipiency rate this is something
that causes a lot of confusion this is something that a lot of individuals who
receive unemployment benefits really aren't educated about and I'm going to
set the record straight here just because you're unemployed or just
because you lost your job does not mean that you're going to be able to collect
unemployment benefits different states have different interpretations about
this and there's a big gap between states when it comes to measuring how
many people lost their jobs and how many people are actually receiving benefits
this is called the recipiency rate North Carolina's recipiency rate for example
is the nation's lowest just 10.5% and you see this chart on your screen right
here which shows you the share of unemployed people collecting insurance
now keep in mind these rates were prior to the pandemic but a lot of experts
believe that this gives you an indication of how likely your state is
to pay your unemployment claim the higher the recipiency rate the more
likely your state is to pay unemployment claim based on the chart that you see on
your screen here so there are many factors at play here for example not all
unemployed individuals are eligible to collect benefits for example some like
self-employed and independent contractors they are not generally they
are not generally eligible unemployment benefits although there was
an exception made for them under the cares Act and I have covered that in
another video that's where the PUA program comes in which provides up to 39
weeks of unemployment benefits no more than three hundred and fifty dollars per
week an even individuals who qualified for the PUA program I'm talking
independent contractor self-employed were eligible are eligible for the $600
week federal booster which again at the time I'm recording this video is
scheduled to end at the end of July pending any further legislation that
would lead to an extension now some states make it harder to collect
unemployment benefits some states make it easy
also this depends on whether you were fired for cause or simply laid off and
furloughed I have covered that in other videos on my channel so you definitely
want to check out the unemployment benefits playlist let's take a closer
look at this chart of the recipients II red you can see that states with the
highest recipiency rate include New Jersey 57% Massachusetts 52% that means
more than half of the individuals who are jobless get unemployment benefits
again a lot of this has to do with people who apply as well
they have been instances of people who haven't been able to apply or who
haven't yet applied because they feel the system is overloaded but again New
Jersey Massachusetts Connecticut Vermont Rhode Island California tend to have a
higher recipiency rate on the other hand states with low recipients area it's not
Carolina just 9% Florida a hot mess as far as unemployment insurance claims are
concerned just 11% recipiency rate this is again back from 2019 which gives us
an indication of what is happening right now and we know what is happening right
now I have a lot of my viewers and subscribers in Florida South Dakota
Louisiana Mississippi 11 percent and 12 percent respectively and then Nebraska
Arizona Tennessee right around 14 percent so you can see based on the
recipiency rate you have a general idea about how quickly and how efficiently
your claim is going to be processed by the state unemployment agency and now my
subscribers let's get to the thing all of you have been patiently waiting for
the range of state unemployment benefits I'm talking about the state minimum
and the maximum weekly unemployment benefits now this chart that you see on
your screen here shows you the minimum and the maximum weekly unemployment
benefits - the $600 week federal booster so take a look at this chart right here
you'll see that light blue dot to the left side of your screen that is the
minimum unemployment weekly benefit and you see that that sort of dark blue dot
on the right side of your screen that is a maximum weekly unemployment benefit
for that particular state you can get a sense of this significant variation
between states now take a look at Massachusetts where that little blue dot
is all the way to the right and I'll explain why that's the case in just a
minute but again looking at this chart will give you a sense of what is the
minimum weekly unemployment benefit and what is the maximum weekly unemployment
benefit from your state not taking into consideration the $600 week federal
booster it is important for you to know this because at some point it's likely
that the $600 week federal booster is going to go away it might be reduced
maybe not taken away all together in the near future but you need to be aware of
the minimum and the maximum weekly unemployment benefit in your particular
state so states set their own caps like I'd mentioned earlier they set the floor
and they set the ceiling they set the minimum weekly unemployment
benefit and the maximum weekly unemployment benefit for unemployed
workers now if you take a look at that light blue dot on the left side of your
screen you see that most states set the weekly minimum unemployment benefits at
under $100 week you and I both know that that's nothing but it is interesting to
note that that little blue dot that light blue dot falls on the wrong side
of the $200 mark in other words the average weekly minimum unemployment
benefit is under $100 a week for most states across the country now in this
video I will focus on three states Hawaii Massachusetts and Mississippi
just to give you a sense of the variation and again in part two of the
video I'm going to go into a lot more detail and give you the minimum and the
maximum and the retroactive dates in each state across the country I don't
know anyone else on the internet forget you - I don't know anyone else
on the Internet that's giving you this kind of information in a video in a
manner that's easy to understand so again if you appreciate this please
click like please click Subscribe and please enable notifications I would
really appreciate that now the state of Hawaii this is really interesting has
the lowest weekly minimum unemployment benefit amount which is just five
dollars a week now let's compare that with Massachusetts and Mississippi
Massachusetts has the highest the more the maximum weekly unemployment benefit
amount which is one thousand two hundred and thirty-four dollars a week for
individuals with dependents and it's it goes down to 823 dollars a week for
individuals without dependents now in contrast Mississippi has the lowest
weekly maximum unemployment benefit amount which is just two hundred and
thirty five dollars a week that's all that's all you get in Mississippi the
maximum weekly unemployment benefit now those were the weekly unemployment
benefits the minimums and the maximums you know and I know that the game
completely changes with a $600 week federal booster the FP you see the $600
week federal compensation what happens when the $600 week is actually factored
in to this equation you get this chart take a look at this chart on your screen
all those dark blue spots show you states where the average compensation
with the $600 week federal booster is the highest and the light blue section
shows you the states where even with the $600 week federal booster those
individuals are getting less than other states so this chart shows you the
average weekly benefits that unemployment recipients get after the
passage of the KSAT in response to this pandemic now the light blue section
shows you individuals who get close to $800 a week that includes a $600 a week
federal booster so as you can see that that $800 a week a majority of that is
from the federal booster and that dark blue section is individuals who now get
into the $1200 week range thanks to the federal boo so let's look at the first
item on the right side of your screen Massachusetts is all the way up to 1155
dollars a week as a result of this federal booster look let's go down the
screen a little bit this is Louisiana Mississippi
Alabama offer the lowest weekly benefits despite the $600 week federal booster
let's look at point to Hawaii got a nice big boost and they are now at 1133
dollars a week with the federal booster and if you look at number three you have
Washington where they're getting one thousand and ninety two dollars a week
thanks to the $600 week federal booster now to all my viewers and subscribers I
personally think that this chart speaks volumes this chart is the average weekly
unemployment benefit without the additional $600 week federal boost and
again I think it's important for us to keep this in mind because at some point
the boost is going to go away or going to be reduced it is going to go away
entirely at some point as soon as the economy recovers so at then again at the
time I am recording this video it's scheduled to end at the end of July
without additional legislation for extension so let's take a look at the
state unemployment benefits that are set to decline once a $600 week federal
booster goes away now you see that arrow and now what happens is on the right
side of your screen is where the actual weekly unemployment
benefit gets to with the $600 week federal boost up and you can see the
arrow all the way to the left side which is where the state weekly unemployment
benefits will end up in other words the normal or the average weekly
unemployment benefits that's where they'll end up once a $600 week federal
boost has taken away these are weekly numbers everybody these are weekly
numbers so you can see there's going to be a substantial difference to the
amount of money that you're getting depending on the state that you live in
now I will link you to this chart in the description section below so make sure
you check out the description section also and link you to all the Articles
that were that I researched while creating this content so definitely you
can check this out for yourself by clicking on any of the links in the
description but I'm going to focus on California Florida and then I'm going to
tell you about the u.s. national average let's take a look at California as you
can see with that line for the state of California you can see that individuals
in California received over 900 dollars a week with the $600 e federal boost and
once that federal booster goes away individuals in California are going to
get right around 350 dollars a week a substantial reduction because you're
going to go down by $600 let's take a look at this
of Florida individuals in Florida were gaining right around $900 a week and
when you bring that down by approximately $600 you get $300 a week
so as you can see that's a substantial difference and the national average the
u.s. national averages right around 950 dollars a week and that'll now come down
to right around three hundred and seventy three hundred and eighty dollars
a week so as you can see there's going to be a substantial impact in weekly
unemployment benefits pending any additional legislation for extension of
the $600 each federal booster in the next video and part 2 of this video I'm
going to talk about maximum weekly unemployment benefits with retroactive
dates for every state I'm going to go into a lot more detail I appreciate you
watching this I hope you learned something new like I mentioned before
for every one minute that you watch it takes one hour of work to prepare for
the video to film to edit the video and then to release the video along with the
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update about future important videos from ignition time I definitely think
you should check out the video when I talked about what is expiring versus
what is extended you should also check out the video where I give you a detail
breakdown on states where the unemployment benefits were actually
extended so you definitely want to check those out and check out the unemployment
benefits playlist once again thank you so much for watching I really appreciate
you please click the like button below please enable notifications and please
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videos at 2 p.m. East Coast time most days of the week and I'm looking forward
to seeing you in the next episode of ignition time thank you bye