Today, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) shared an update on the implementation of the federal stimulus legislation.

The federal stimulus package, signed into law December 27, extends a number of unemployment insurance provisions from the 2020 CARES Act, including:

• 11 more weeks of benefits under the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program
• 11 more weeks of benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program
• A $300 per week supplemental payment to anyone receiving unemployment benefits from any program

DEED transitioned to the new stimulus programs quickly, moving about 240,000 applicant accounts in time for them to request benefits on Jan. 3, 2021. As of Friday morning, these payments totaled about $164 million for the week.

During the first week of the new program, the Unemployment Insurance Program paid:

• Approximately $43.8 million in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC)
• Approximately $43.2 million in Standard Unemployment Insurance Benefits
• Approximately $76.8 million in Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (PUC). PUC is the additional $300 dollar benefit to all applicants eligible for at least $1 in PUA, PEUC, and Standard UI Benefits

DEED quickly scaled its unemployment insurance operation to meet the increased demand caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Over the course of 2020, DEED received over a million new applications for unemployment insurance with payments going out to more than 814,000 individuals compared to 120,000 new applicants in 2019.

In 2020, the unemployment insurance program paid $9,680,185,156. Here’s a breakdown of 2020 unemployment insurance payments by program

Please visit www.uimn.org for more information. We will make updates as they become available.