Unemployment benefits surpass $15 billion in Georgia
Special Logo
From staff reports
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Labor announced this week that Georgians have received more than $15 billion in unemployment insurance benefits since March of this year, more than the past 27 years combined.
Last week, the GDOL dispersed almost $173 million in benefits, which included $67 million in regular unemployment and almost $10 million in federally funded Lost Wages Assistance supplements, almost $30 million in Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, $50 million in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, $11 million in Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, and $4.7 million in State Extended Benefits.
“Over 1.4 million Georgians have received benefits during the past seven months, and many are beginning to return to the workplace or are looking for new career opportunities,” Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. “Our Business Services Unit is now centralizing their efforts to market virtual job fairs, customized recruitment, and other re-employment services.”
Today, nearly 168,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia for Georgians to access. This job total has more than doubled since the April 2020 listing of just 73,000 jobs.
The GDOL offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other re-employment needs. Employment opportunities include human resource specialists, restaurant managers, bookkeepers, 911 operators, licensed practical nurses, and many more. Wages are highly competitive and range from $10 to $75 per hour to more than $100,000 for annual salaried employment. Last week, regular UI initial claims totaled 44,892, down 9,274 over the week. The GDOL has worked diligently to dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes to release payments and is now processing regular UI claims within two weeks of a claim file date. All eligible payments are released for claims that do not require additional determinations. If a claimant has been fired or quit his/her job, a review will be necessary to determine eligibility. This review could potentially delay payments.
The number of initial unemployment claims filed throughout the United States for the week ending Oct. 17 was 787,000, a decrease of 55,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 842,000.
Resources for re-employment assistance along with information on filing an unemployment claim and details on how employers can file partial claims can be found on the agency’s webpage at dol.georgia.gov.
