Nearly 200,000 Unemployed Californians Won’t Get $300 Enhanced Benefit, Study Shows

By Mike Hagerty

Out of work Californians are expecting an additional $300 in enhanced unemployment benefits to begin next week, but a study from the California Policy Lab says 192,000 jobless residents of the state won’t get any of it.

One of the eligibility requirements to get the money is that recipients have to already be getting at least $100 a week in regular unemployment benefits. But California’s unemployment payouts can be as little as $40 a week.  

“They’re more likely to be female workers, more likely to identify as Asian, they are less likely to be highly educated, and more likely to be young,” UCLA Economics Professor Till von Wachter, who is the faculty director of the CPL said. “So this is a group of workers who is already vulnerable.”

Like the $600 enhanced unemployment benefits that expired in July, these are federal funds.  But the eligibility requirement for the $600 was that a person needed to be getting just one dollar a week in regular unemployment. The federal government has not explained the change.

VonWachter says even the people who will get this money likely won’t be engaging in the discretionary spending that experts say kept the economy afloat earlier this year.  

“Essentially, people are just making up some of the income they lost on July 25, and they are now again at square zero with their relatively low unemployment insurance benefits.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified UCLA Economics Professor Till von Wachter, who is the faculty director of the CPL. It has been corrected.