As Congress returned September 8 from its month-long recess in August, Arizona’s unemployment system is running out of money. The CARES Act expired on July 31, 2020 and, amid its expiration, the Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES) and Governor Doug Ducey implemented the Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program in its place.
In short, LWA provides financial assistance to eligible Arizonans that amounts to $540 a week, $300 of which comes from grant funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). LWA was launched under presidential executive order and was first implemented in the state of Arizona on August 17, 2020. Arizonans eligible for the $540 a week provided by LWA must be fully or partially unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and currently receiving unemployment benefits from one of the following programs:
- Extended Benefits (EB)
- Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC)
- Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)
- Shared Work (SW)
- Trade Readjustment Allowances (TRA)
- Unemployment Compensation for Ex-Servicemembers (UCX)
- Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE)
- Unemployment Insurance (UI)
The LWA programs remains until one of the following occur:
- Due to COVID-19, enactment of federal legislation providing supplemental federal unemployment compensation, or similar compensation, for under- or unemployed individuals
- The $44 billion in the Disaster Relief Fund designated for the LWA program is exhausted
- The benefit week ending December 5, 2020 is reached
- The Federal Disaster Relief Fund Balance reaches $25 billion
As per the DES, the LWA program is predicted to run out of funds in the next two weeks (from September 7, 2020). ABC15 reported in August that researches from Grand Canyon Institute hypothesized a five (5) week time span of additional benefits from the LWA program — which is proving to be an accurate estimate. DES director, Michael Wisehart, revealed in a press conference on Wednesday, September 2:
We’re spending about $50 million per week from the unemployment insurance trust fund…We’ve got about eight weeks or so of solvency left in the state trust fund.
– DES Director Michael Wisehart
Arizona’s trust fund began at $1.1 billion dollars; according to Wisehart, funds from the state trust fund have diminished to $400 million.
CIMA Law Group Blog 