‘Right now, I’m in panic mode’: US freelancers plead with Congress to pass Covid relief – By Steven Greenhouse (The Guardian) / Dec 7 2020
Millions of self-employed workers are set to lose their benefits after Christmas and lawmakers have yet to find a solution
Suzy Young, an artist in Winterport, Maine, cheered when Congress enacted an innovative program that provided unemployment benefits to artists, freelancers and the self-employed after Covid-19 hit the US. But like many others, Young – whose art sales have plunged in recent months – is angry that this pandemic aid program is due to expire the day after Christmas.
Young was already upset that the most generous part of the program – $600 a week in supplemental jobless benefits – expired in July, but now she fears she will lose all her jobless benefits. Four months behind on her $1,800 rent, she is fighting her landlord’s effort to evict her and her disabled husband on 1 January.
“Congress needs to do something, or a lot of people are going to face homelessness,” said Young, 58. A fiber artist who weaves works out of wool, Young saw her income disappear when the farmers market where she sold her work was closed due to the lockdown. “That killed my business,” she said. She was getting by while receiving the $600 weekly supplement, but once that disappeared, her unemployment benefits fell to $172 a week.
A study by the Century Foundation estimates that 7.3 million freelancers, artists, self-employed and others will lose their weekly benefits if the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (known as PUA) expires, as scheduled, after Christmas. That program is unusual because jobless benefits traditionally go only to laid-off workers who are considered employees – and not to freelancers or the self-employed. A second program – Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation – is also scheduled to expire 26 December, ending special federal benefits for 4.6 million laid-off workers who were considered employees.
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