LogFAQs > #941479580

I think many of you don't understand that currently you don't need to seek work to remain on unemployment, so it's not fraud. That may change soon, but for now, you do not have to look for work to receive unemployment under the PUA.

In theory, you could even quit a job and STILL qualify because of stay at home orders, especially if your high risk.

The qualifications for receiving unemployment under the PUA are very small, almost anyone could qualify if they wanted to. Basically if you have a work from home job, and quit, you wouldn't qualify.

If you work at a job that isn't following safety precautions and you don't feel safe, you can qualify even if you quit.
If your high risk, you can quit as you have been told to stay at home.
If you didn't have a job at all, you can qualify because you can't look for a job safely.

So again, people are not required to go back to their old jobs, since they are not required to LOOK for work at all right now. Technically if they turn down a job they need to report that, but, they are not required to call back their ex-employers to get a job offer from them.

Initially at least in WA this was set to end July 1st and the PUA is set to end at the end of July...but they may extend one or both of those deadlines.

Part of the problem is ....well, they extreme range in wages.

Some people can live on $1000 a month just fine (and in fact without having to work and spend money on travel etc, even less), others are going to struggle on $3000 a month. This led them to adding....I think it was $600? A week to unemployment during the PUA.

Min wage varies, as does the base min unemployment you can get from state to state, but for easy numbers, lets use $10 an hour as a semi-universal min wage currently, and base min unemployment as $200 a week.

A large percentage of jobs pay min wage or near min wage, for those people if we use $10 an hour, that is $400 a week and $1200 a month, or about $1000 a month after taxes etc.

Meanwhile under the PUA they get a MINIMUM of $800 a week, and probably more like $1000. So they are making literally as much per week as they used to make per month working full time.

Yes, part of the problem was so many jobs were paying that little (also don't forget many min wage jobs refuse to give a full 40 hours, and many were living on 34 or less hours a week as well).

Again, as I posted above, for many living paycheck to paycheck, they have gotten 4x as much as they usually make per month, for over 5 months now. That is enough for them to comfortably live for well over a year before having to go back to work at this point. Why would they risk going out and getting sick to work a job they don't need in the near future?

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