The 9 Million Who Slipped Through the Cracks

A record number of Americans filed for unemployment during the Covid recession—and a record number didn’t get any money

- Shawn Donnan and Reade Pickert

Barb Ashbrook, who lost her part-time job at a food court in downtown Indianapolis in March 2020, was denied unemployment benefits because she was earning more than $121 a week from a second job at a Dollar Tree store. Ray Rand, laid off by an RV rental company in Las Vegas, was rejected after missing a 48-hour deadline to respond to an inquiry while in the hospital. Anthony Barela, an Albuquerque barber, spent months trying to find out why he didn’t get benefits.

They’re three of at least 9 million Americans thrown out of work by the pandemic who didn’t receive any unemployment benefits despite the largest deployment of economic aid in U.S. history, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek estimate based on a review of more than a year’s worth of U.S. Department of Labor data. That’s a hole in the safety net as big as the population of Virginia.

Now, as the U.S. reopens, unemployment assistance has become the focus of a political debate. Critics say the programs enacted during the pandemic may be undermining the recovery by discouraging jobless Americans from looking for work—an argument challenged by many labor economists and top White House advisers.

More than half the states, almost all with Republican governors, have announced they will stop paying a $300-a-week federal supplement before it’s set to expire in September. A majority of those are also ending a program created for workers not previously eligible for unemployment insurance. The controversy has deferred a frank assessment of the system that will remain: an 85-year-old New Deal creation that proved woefully inadequate in an emergency.