Millions of Americans scrape by after benefits
expire: 'I lost everything'
Americans struggle to survive after $600 unemployment
benefits expire and are left to rely on state benefits while waiting on Trump’s
reduced federal benefits of $400 a week
Michael
Sainato
Thu 20 Aug
2020 11.00 BSTLast modified on Thu 20 Aug 2020 21.11 BST
A single
mother of three children, Sandra Bivin of Denver, Colorado, is now being forced
to try to survive on $58 a week since the $600-a-week expanded unemployment
benefits expired on 26 July.
It is not
easy.
Before the
pandemic hit, Bivin worked as a driver for Uber and Lyft, and had a part-time
job in accounting. Because of her part-time position, she doesn’t qualify for
pandemic unemployment assistance offered to independent contractors until her
regular employment runs out in another seven weeks.
In the
meantime, Bivin has struggled to make ends meet and will be ineligible for the
$400-a-week unemployment benefits from Donald Trump’s executive order when it
goes into effect.
“My
mortgage alone is $1,100 a month. I already sold my car in order to live off
unemployment I was receiving. I’m almost completely out of savings and I have
no idea what I’m going to do without the $600,” said Bivin.
The scale
of the jobless crisis in America is immense. For 20 straight weeks, new unemployment
claims in the US were above 1m. About 30 million Americans claiming jobless
benefits are being left to rely on state unemployment benefits while waiting on
Trump’s reduced federal benefits of $400 a week to begin if they are eligible
to receive them.
Trump’s
executive order has been criticized by Democrats and labor groups for
circumventing Congress and the obstacles it places for recipients and state
unemployment systems that have already been struggling with backlogs of claims
and amending claims for recipients to receive back pay for weeks they missed
while waiting to be processed.
“My only
choice right now is for us to eat the bare minimum, pay what I can toward at
least my rent and vehicle payment and hope for the best,” said Michelle
Cieslewski, 51, of Cleveland, Ohio, who lost her two jobs in March, in
construction and at an auction house, when the pandemic hit.
Single and
caring for her 11-year-old grandson, her state unemployment benefits only
provide $281 per week.
Across the
US stories of scraping by are mounting.
“We didn’t
ask for this pandemic and we have no control of it. I was a hard-working man
before this and if I could find a job paying what I was making I would gladly
take it. Unfortunately I can’t,” said Robert Bonner, who lost his job as a line
cook at a hotel in Cleveland, Ohio, in March. “ I can’t provide for my children
with $200 a week.”
In Spring,
Texas, Midge Finnell, a single mom with two daughters, was laid off as a job
recruiter in early May due to company cuts.
“What I was
getting was barely enough to pay my bills. I lost my health insurance. I lost
my 401(k). I lost everything because the government shut everything down and
they don’t even have a plan. It’s not fair,” said Finnell. “I won’t be able to
pay rent if we don’t get any relief. There’s so much my mind races over every
single day. I can’t sleep.”
Even with
the federal expanded benefits of $600 a week, many Americans on unemployment
had to rely on food banks or utilize online fundraising tools like GoFundMe to
cover gaps in lost income or afford medications and medical care they could no
longer pay for due to losing health insurance.
Cody Wessel
of St Louis, Missouri, lost his furniture retail job in May 2020, and with it
the health insurance he relied on to be able to afford insulin. He started a
GoFundMe campaign to try to help cover his insulin costs over the next few
months and was able to receive some insulin doses through a charity.
“Now that
the extra $600 has ended, my income has been reduced to less than $1,000 a
month,” said Wessel. “Without that GoFundMe, I would have no place to live, I
would have nothing to eat, I would have no way to go to the doctor, I wouldn’t
be able to afford my medicine even with Medicaid. It really saved my life.”
The
spending and economic benefits of the $600 enhanced unemployment benefits were
supporting millions of jobs, as spikes in coronavirus cases due to business
reopenings have stalled or even reversed job recovery. About 14 million more
Americans are unemployed than currently available job openings.
“I can’t
pay my rent, electric bill, food or car payments. I’m able to get the bare
minimum with my allotted food stamps,” said Sabrina Wickward Arce, a
cosmetologist who is struggling to find a new job in Miami, Florida.
Kat Ferrel
of Angelina county, Texas worked as a home healthcare worker before the
pandemic and hasn’t been able to return to work because her client passed away.
“I went from
getting $1,614 every two weeks to now getting $414 every two weeks,” said
Ferrel. “They’ve put us right back in worse shape. Who can live on $414 every
two weeks?”
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