Statewide– Hoosiers who are receiving regular unemployment insurance benefits have begun seeing the additional $600 weekly payment from the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) program, ahead of the announced date of April 20, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development (DWD).
Though the additional funds began arriving in some unemployment insurance accounts on Friday, the vast majority of claimants will see payments being made this week. Vouchers must be filed each week in order to continue to receive benefits. It is recommended to file the vouchers on a Tuesday or after during the week, taking the high stress off the historic traffic now hitting the DWD’s Uplink online system.
The CARES Act FPUC provides those individuals with the additional $600 weekly benefit. FPUC is payable effective March 29, 2020, for any week of unemployment until July 31, 2020. DWD will pay this benefit retroactively to March 29. The $600 FPUC benefit is taxable and is subject to child support withholding.
“We are pleased that we were able to start getting these payments to out-of-work Hoosiers ahead of our goal of April 20,” DWD Commissioner Fred Payne said. “This federal assistance will further help those individuals who are not working due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
To put these payments into perspective, this past weekend alone, Friday through Sunday as the FPUC payments were starting to be added, $276 million in payments were made over the three-day period. In all of 2019, $230 million was paid out through the Indiana unemployment insurance assistance program.
