Every State But South Dakota Extends Unemployment Benefits

Trying to navigate everything going on in the world right now is, to put it mildly, extremely difficult. There are pockets of good news, sewn into the giant quilt of the truly awful. But it is a sorting process.

The June jobs report tells us that the unemployment rate has come down, from a high of almost 15% in April, to 11.1% currently. That's the good news. But when you juxtapose that with the information that even at that lowered percentage rate, we are still at a level higher than any time since 1933, during The Great Depression, it's cold comfort.

The number of people in our own state, and across the country, in painful, financial peril, takes on a more substantial meaning than a percentage can convey when it's someone you know, or you, who has lost a job.

In a new poll, 58% of Americans want an extension on unemployment benefits. Many states are stepping into the void left by Congress, while they debate extending the $600 weekly benefits. South Dakota is not one of those states.

States can generally offer up to 39 weeks of unemployment benefits amid the coronavirus pandemic and 26 weeks of state unemployment, plus 13 weeks of federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC). On top of that, all states except South Dakota have enacted Extended Benefits (EB)." --Yahoo Money

EB is a "federally-funded program that extends benefits further", dependent upon the state's unemployment rate. Due to ongoing issues in some states, many people have yet to receive any unemployment assistance.

You've got to wonder what the devastating future consequences will be across the social spectrum from the combined effects of a worldwide pandemic and a global recession.

Sources: Yahoo Money, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and CNN Business