To keep benefits, jobless North Carolinians will soon need to start looking for work
Unemployed people in North Carolina are going to have to start proving they’re looking for work if they want to keep getting paid jobless benefits.
On Monday, Gov. Roy Cooper issued an executive order that will institute that work search requirement but will also make it more flexible than what it has been in the past. People currently on unemployment won’t be affected; Cooper’s order will only apply to “new claimants who apply for unemployment benefits on or after March 14, 2021.”
The work search requirement isn’t new. It’s typically required of everyone on unemployment. But Cooper waived that requirement in an executive order a year ago, in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the same executive order that required many businesses to close last spring, The News & Observer reported at the time, Cooper also issued some new rules making it easier for people to qualify for unemployment benefits and to keep getting those benefits — like not having to prove they were actively searching for a new job.
But now, as federal unemployment benefits are set to expire and more businesses have reopened, Cooper said this change will help ensure that people are able to get help finding and landing jobs.
Under the order, workers would sign up for accounts at ncworks.gov where they could get leads on jobs or workforce training options.
“More jobs are being created as we begin to emerge from the pandemic, and people who are out of work need help getting them,” Cooper said in a press release. “Unemployment payments have been critical for families and we want them to have jobs before the payments end.”
As the North Carolina General Assembly has started its new 2021 session, Republican lawmakers have also been eager to put the work search requirement back in place.
Two weeks ago at a legislative committee hearing, the head of North Carolina’s unemployment agency, Pryor Gibson, told lawmakers that new rules would indeed be coming soon.
“We think our primary mission is to get folks back and employed,” said Gibson, a former Democratic legislator who Cooper picked to take over the Division of Employment Security last year as the agency was struggling in the early months of the pandemic.
At the time, Republican Rep. Julia Howard of Davie County told Gibson she was happy to hear that the Cooper administration was on board with bringing back that requirement.
“That’s something we’re all looking forward to seeing,” she said at that February meeting.
Benefit amounts
While Cooper and Republican lawmakers may agree with bringing back the work search requirement, they may have a harder time finding agreement on how much the state should pay unemployed people in the future.
North Carolina has some of the lowest benefits in the country, due to changes Republican lawmakers passed in 2013 to address a budget shortfall in the unemployment trust fund. But that fund now has around $4 billion in reserve, and Cooper has called for using it to increase the maximum weekly benefits from $350 to $500 — which has been met with skepticism at the legislature.
A bill moving forward in the legislature would institute a work search requirement, in addition to stopping a planned unemployment tax hike for businesses.
Howard sponsored the House version of the bill, House Bill 107, and the Senate version, Senate Bill 114, is sponsored by Republican Sen. Chuck Edwards of Hendersonville.
It’s due to be discussed in another Senate committee Wednesday.
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