More than 2.1 million New Yorkers collected unemployment benefits in the latest available weekly counts from the federal and State Departments of Labor.
For the week ending December 12, 2020, just over 1 million New Yorkers claimed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the program available to self-employed and “gig” workers who may not be eligible for traditional unemployment benefits, as well as certain individuals who are still working but have lost work hours due to the CoViD-19 pandemic. More than 749,000 New Yorkers claimed Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) for that week. PUA and PEUC, which are entirely federally funded, were both extended into March as part of the latest federal stimulus legislation. Another 390,000 New Yorkers claimed unemployment benefits under the regular State program for the week ending December 19, 2020.
The Office of the State Comptroller has processed nearly $59.2 billion in unemployment assistance payments from March 01, 2020 through the week of December 28, 2020, an increase of more than 3,000 percent from the same period a year earlier.
