Deadlines set by Congress early in the pandemic will result in about 12 million Americans losing unemployment insurance by the year’s end, according to a report released Wednesday — a warning about the sharp toll that inaction in Washington could exact on the economic health of both individual households and the economy at large.
According to the report from unemployment researchers Andrew Stettner and Elizabeth Pancotti, those Americans will lose their unemployment benefits the day after Christmas — more than half of the 21.1 million people currently on the benefits — due to deadlines Congress chose when it passed the Cares Act in March amid optimism the pandemic would be short-lived.
Another 4.4 million people have already exhausted their benefits this year, according to Stettner and Pancotti, who wrote the report for the Century Foundation, a public policy research group. Continue reading.