Soon after the state passed an extension for unemployment insurance (UI), the federal government took action at the end of December and passed an 11-week Unemployment Insurance extension. The federal extension includes the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. Additionally, a $300 per week supplemental payment to anyone receiving unemployment benefits was also included.
While the federal government paid for the benefit extension, state governments are responsible for determining who qualifies and distributes the money. Those seeking unemployment can apply through the State of Minnesota.
In 2020, the UI program paid out $9,680,185,156 when accounting for regular and new federal benefits. This represents 23,010,049 actual payments. A recent DEED press release included the following, “Over the course of 2020, DEED received over a million new applications for unemployment insurance with payments going out to more than 814,000 individuals compared to 120,000 new applicants in 2019.”
