I don't know if I should be thinking and saying this, but it seems that as awful as Coronavirus has been for everyone, including myself (with the business wiped out for the time being and no clue about what the future holds), I am glad that at least the politicians realized that those of us who might be known as self-employed, gig economy workers, contractors, 1099-ers, etc. (including those of us who work for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, GrubHub, Instacart) may be able to receive unemployment insurance to pay our bills.
Under the provision of the so-called The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), unemployment benefits are available to us. The Act also extends the number of available weeks of benefits for all claimants, and supplements all claimants’ weekly benefit amount by $600.
How will it work?
Since I have never received these payments in the past, I decided to find out, and here is what I learned:
Under the provision of the so-called The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), unemployment benefits are available to us. The Act also extends the number of available weeks of benefits for all claimants, and supplements all claimants’ weekly benefit amount by $600.
How will it work?
Since I have never received these payments in the past, I decided to find out, and here is what I learned:
- Because it has never been done before, the states, which administer unemployment insurance benefits, no one has a clue.
- The states are waiting for guidance from the federal government (mainly the US Department of Labor) to figure out the amounts to be given, acceptable paperwork, eligibility, etc.
- The applications and forms used by states simply do not have the option to accept self employed workers like us, and since many offices are closed, many workers working remotely, and everything is running slow, it will take a while before they get their act together to design new online applications, decide on application requirements, business rules, eligibility requirements, exceptions, and technical requirements.
At the time of writing this post on March 31, 2020 the state of Massachusetts (where I live) has no information on what we should do, but I check the website daily and will post an update as soon I learn more.