SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California's Employment Development Department (EDD) issued a reminder on Thursday that when CARES Act funding ends on Dec. 26, so will the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) extensions.
PEUC presently comes into play for qualified individuals when the standard 26-week unemployment insurance benefit ends. It adds up to an additional 13 weeks of payments.
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PUA provides up to 46 weeks of income to those not usually eligible for standard unemployment, like business owners and independent contractors.
It's estimated by the California Policy Lab that the loss of those benefits will impact 750,000 recipients across the state.
Also worth noting, FED-ED, which will become the one remaining federal unemployment extension, will be rolled back to 13 weeks from its current 20. Those extra seven weeks are funded by CARES Act dollars.
The EDD says they will transition qualified individuals who collect PEUC when it expires over to FED-ED automatically. A notification will be sent through the mail to those claimants.
FED-ED extensions filed on or after Dec. 27 will be good for up to 13 weeks.
The EDD says that any FED-ED claims filed before that will be recalculated to 13 weeks, but that anyone who collected more than that won't be saddled with an overpayment bill.
Presently, there is no end date for the FED-ED extension, which is tied to the state's unemployment levels.
