South Carolina health officials are busy trying to distribute vaccines for COVID-19 to end the coronavirus pandemic, but in the meantime, the state is dealing with tens of thousands of unemployed South Carolina.
The most recent data shows that more than 154,000 people continued to apply for state or federal unemployment benefits through the SC Department of Employment and Workforce on December 26.
And another 17,413 people reportedly filed a new unemployment claim form with the state agency in the last week of December and the first week of January.
This new increase in workers displaced for help is partly the result of a seasonal leap that takes place every year after the holidays. Even when the economy is doing well, states across the country see an increase in new unemployment insurance claims at the beginning of each year.
Dan Ellzey, director of the DEW, testified in front of state legislators on Thursday and gave an overview of the unemployment problems the state handled last year. During this presentation, Ellzey emphasized the agency’s goal of trying to get unemployed workers in the state for new jobs, even as the pandemic continues to pull parts of the economy.
That is a monumental task now. The latest figures make it clear that South Carolina is still dealing with a dramatic number of people who lost jobs and income during the public health crisis.
More than 46,000 people were applying for unemployment benefits from the South Carolina unemployment fund at the end of last month.
This is an improvement over what the state was managing in early 2020, but for one perspective, the last time South Carolina had so many people trying to collect state benefits from the trust fund was in early 2012, when the country was recovering from the Great Recession.
The current situation of unemployment, however, gets even worse when adding the number of people who seek assistance from the federal government.
Nearly 70 percent of people who continued to seek unemployment insurance in late December were not using state funds. They were applying through two federal unemployment programs that were created at the beginning of the pandemic.
Approximately 39,237 of these people signed up for a program known as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which allowed contractors, self-employed workers and so-called “gig workers” to receive unemployment benefits for the first time.
And another 68,453 people signed up through the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which extended the benefits to anyone who has already used their 20 weeks of state unemployment eligibility.
Both programs are in a state of change at the moment.
Congress passed another stimulus bill in late December, which added an additional 11 weeks for people who depend on federal assistance. But DEW has not yet reimplemented the programs with the changes required by Congress.
As a result, people applying through these programs are not currently receiving their normal unemployment benefit of up to $ 327 per week and cannot receive an extra $ 300 per week that Congress has made available to all eligible unemployed applicants in the parents.
Reach Andrew Brown at 843-708-1830 or follow him on Twitter @andy_ed_brown.