Oregon Insight: Loss of unemployment aid sent a record number of workers over a ‘benefits cliff’ - OregonLive

Here is The Oregonian’s weekly look at the numbers behind the state’s economy. View past installments here.

More than 94,000 unemployed Oregonians lost their weekly benefits this month when multiple federal pandemic aid programs expired at the same time.

That’s 80% of all the people who had been receiving assistance prior to the Labor Day cutoff, according to data from the Oregon Employment Department. There are now just 24,000 Oregonians receiving unemployment assistance, even fewer than the weeks before the pandemic when the state’s jobless rate was at a historic low.

It’s an unprecedented drop, triggered by the “benefits cliff” built into COVID-19 relief programs Congress passed at the beginning of the year. Never before have so many Oregonians lost jobless assistance in a single week, according to research by Tom Cusack’s Oregon Housing Blog.

Some business organizations hope the aid cutoff will push more people into the workforce, easing the labor shortage that is plaguing Oregon and the entire country. But the number of Oregonians receiving jobless benefits had been in steep decline all year – and the number of job vacancies kept climbing anyway.

The programs had been paying out $93 million a week in Oregon at the end of August, when the expanded benefits were still in place. That tally fell to just $29 million last week.

Some economists and worker advocates fear the loss of that federal assistance will exacerbate the pandemic hardship. The cutoff was especially steep for the self-employed and for gig workers, who usually aren’t eligible for benefits because they don’t pay into the unemployment insurance trust fund.

Congress created a new program for self-employed workers in March 2020, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which was supporting nearly 32,000 Oregonians at the end of August. Some in Congress, including Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, pushed to make that program permanent.

But the effort never gained traction, and supporters never identified a funding source.

Most of the others had been receiving regular benefits through a temporary program that extended assistance for the long-term unemployed.

A subset of those who lost benefits this month are likely to resume benefits soon, according to the employment department. Some who were on an extended aid program called Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Assistance will qualify for regular benefits after serving a waiting week.

The employment department estimates that number at about 11,000.

-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway |

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