More Nevadans may soon become eligible for unemployment benefits

The U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday announced new guidance for state employment departments that would expand eligibility for the unemployment insurance benefits program for independent contractors, the self-employed and gig workers.

Labor department officials said the expansion could potentially help those who continue to struggle financially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Up until now, unemployment insurance benefits during the pandemic have been too scattered and too uncertain,” Patricia Smith, senior adviser to the secretary of labor, told reporters Thursday. “That begins to change today, with many more workers now eligible for crucial unemployment insurance benefits.”

The move would extend retroactive Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits to workers who were:

■ already receiving unemployment benefits and were later found ineligible because they had turned down work at a site not complying with coronavirus safety standards.

■ at schools facing schedule and pay volatility because they don’t have a contract or reasonable assurance of continued employment while schools are closed because of the coronavirus.

■ laid off or had hours reduced because their employer had partially closed.

Labor Department officials said they didn’t know how many people across the country would become newly eligible for these benefits.

DETR reviewing guidance

A spokeswoman for Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation provided a statement in response to a list of questions.

“In support of the new guidance, the Department of Labor will provide state systems with funds needed to make necessary changes and the time to update their systems to enable retroactive payment of PUA to eligible claimants,” the statement read. “DETR received this new guidance today; staff are reviewing in order to identify next steps needed for implementation. DETR will provide an update once our review is complete.”

The Labor Department said it expected the expanded eligibility would become available, at earliest, by the end of next month. Officials said implementation will take “substantial work and time” for state employment agencies; they can apply for up to $100,000 in funding to help make it happen.

“I can guarantee that the states want to be able to deliver that benefit to those people,” said Suzi LeVine, the principal deputy assistant secretary of labor for employment and training. “It may take some longer because their systems may be older. It’s a complex thing that this provision enables, especially the retroactivity.”

The federal pandemic benefits program was created out of the $2 trillion CARES Act relief package enacted last March. Pandemic benefits are federally funded through the law, which already provides self-employed and gig workers the ability to turn down work and remain eligible for benefits.

This new guidance would extend similar options to people who received and were later denied continuing claims for traditional unemployment benefits, LeVine said. Those claimants should have evidence to support their assessment that work isn’t safe.

“People aren’t masked, the space doesn’t abide by the PPP needs, or the people are packed in too tightly, because there could be future reviews of their attestations,” she said.

Nevada’s employment department already pays claims to workers who’ve had hours reduced as a function of the pandemic.

Newly eligible claimants could seek retroactive benefits as far back as February 2020, though only if someone filed an initial PUA claim on or before Dec. 27, according to the guidance. Any initial PUA claims filed after Dec. 27 can receive up to just three weeks of retroactive benefits, from the week beginning Dec. 6.

Through the week ending Feb. 13, more than 1.08 million PUA initial claims have been filed in Nevada. State agency officials say the number is “highly variable” due to rampant fraud within the program.

‘Welcome news’

Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said Thursday that the new guidance from the Labor Department “is a huge relief and welcomed news to all those who were essentially forced by their state to choose ‘your money or your health’ when they were called back to work.”

With the new guidance, Stettner said, workers who declined work due to pandemic safety concerns “have the comfort in knowing that the federal government will have their backs.”

He added that Thursday’s announcement fixes a “glaring problem” within the PUA program: “Under previous rules, those who had to quit work because their child’s school closed due to COVID-19 could lose PUA if their school reopened, whether or not they had a job to go back to,” Stettner said in an emailed statement to the Review-Journal.

“One year into the pandemic, the Biden administration is taking pragmatic, commonsense steps to improve the lives of millions of workers still suffering the economic consequences of COVID-19,” Stettner said. “Today’s Labor Department guidance is a step in that direction.”

Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter. Contact Jonathan Ng at jng@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ByJonathanNg on Twitter.