Corrections & Clarifications: A prior version of this story incorrectly reported the amount Ashton Mink receives in pandemic childcare assistance. She receives $670 a month.
Ashton Mink has a hard time following the latest bickering in Congress over versions of a COVID-19 relief package.
The 23-year-oldfrom Aumsville was working three jobs to support herselfand her daughter but is now unemployed and on the edge of a financial cliff.All three workplaceswere forced to close multiple times or modify operations when they were open.
Now her $188 weeklyunemployment benefits are about to run out.
"I honestly don’t even know how I’m going to pay my car insurance this month," Mink said."How are we supposed to live like this?"
The day after Christmas, about70,000 Oregonians and 12 millionpeople in the United States will lose unemployment benefits that have kept them barely financially solvent.
Congress has argued along partisan lines for six months over the details of economic stimulus packages, pointing fingers and blaming each other for who is responsible for the perilous situations of people like Mink.
If Congress, which is scheduled to begin its winter break Dec. 18,doesn't finda solution in the next few weeks, Mink and the millions of unemployed Americans like her will no longer receive benefits.
“They pretty much tied a weight to everyone’s ankles and threw me in a river,” Mink said.
The unemployment safety net
Unemployment was somethingMink didn't think about until 2020.
A year after her daughter was born, Minksays sheput aside her ambitions of getting aculinary arts degreeto go to work as a waitress at Neufeldt’s Restaurant in Aumsville.
Mink said she wasdetermined to give her daughter a better life than she had while growing up.
She picked up a second job as a night bartender at Sugar Shack Gentlemen’s Club in Salem on the weekends andtook on a third job as a bartender at Stars Cabaret.Evenafter a divorce about a year ago, she had managed to build up a small savings.
Then in March, all three of her employers closeddueto the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was on my way to work and my boss called me and told me, ‘You don’t have to come in anymore. We’re closing,’” Mink said.
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It took about a monthuntil she received her first unemployment benefits checks.She'd already spent her $2,000 savings and was desperate to figure out how to pay the rent.
“To the point where I was looking through my house to have a yard sale,” Mink said.
How it's supposed to work
Unemployment insurance is supposed to be a safety net, paying a percentage of what workersusuallyearn while trying to findanother job.
In March, Congress quickly passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which – among other things – expanded unemployment benefits to the self-employed for the first time, offeredan additional$600 weekly unemployment benefit through July and extended benefits beyond the regular 26 weeks.
But most of the programs authorized by the CARES Act expire Dec. 26.
"The Senate Republican leadership has put out a proposal that barely touched unemployment insurance, full of corporate giveaways, and the Trump administration’s actually worse," said Oregon Democratic SenatorRon Wyden.
"What they wanted to do was a one-time $600 payment and the rest of the time the workers should figure, just try to figure out how to make dollars stretch through some very tough days."
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Even if something is signed into law before Congress adjourns for Christmas, many Oregonians receiving unemployment benefits will experience a disruption.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any realistic chance that could be done without some gap in payments,” said David Gerstenfeld, acting director of the Oregon Employment Department. “We’ve been getting as much work done to minimize that gap.
“Fortunately, some of the proposals that we’ve seen recently do not have the most complex aspects. We’re not seeing those most complicated versions being talked about now, but it certainly would take several weeks at a minimum if it’s not straightforward.”
New unemployment claims spike amid more shutdowns
Oregon’s unemployment system never saw anything like the spike in claims it had in the first weeks of the pandemic; now it's on its second spike.
Initial unemployment claims in the state climbed to a record62,788 in a week for regular unemployment the week of March 29 through April 4, and continued claims – the total number of people on regular unemployment – peaked at 309,543 the week of May 3 through 9, according to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That number of people unemployed was more than the population of any city in Oregon, except Portland.
As businesses reopened and rehired employees, the number of weekly claims in Oregon fell to a low of 4,408 initial claims the week of Sept. 27 through Oct. 3 and continued claims – those still drawing unemployment benefits– fell to 78,759 the week of Nov. 15 to 21.
In the past three weeks, however, initial unemployment claims have spiked again with 40,001 new claims for regular unemployment in the period and 32,965 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the federal program to give aid to the self-employed and gig workers.
Gerstenfeld said about 34,000 people like Mink who received unemployment payments earlier in the year have reapplied for benefits since the shutdowns.
Normally people in Oregon would receive a maximum of 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. The state takes part in a program that provides an additional 13 or 20 weeks of benefits in times of high unemployment.
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But Oregon's unemployment rate dropped to 6.9% in October from a high of 14.2% in April. The statedropped extended benefits to 13weeksas of Dec. 12, so some people have already run out of unemployment.
“Federal law requires us to turn on and turn off based on the unemployment rate,” Gerstenfeld said. “If our employment rates drops below 6.5%, the three-month average unemployment rate, then, unfortunately, the extended benefit program goes away completely.”
A trade group that represents live event venues in Oregon estimates 78% of the 35,000 workers in its segment – 27,500 people – have been unable to work since March due to COVID-19 shutdowns are on the verge of losing their unemployment benefits.
“But these are jobs we can bring back if our workers can continue to receive unemployment benefits after the end of 2020 until the vaccine and our state’s leadership allows us to go back to work,” said Dwayne Thomas, President of Live Events Industry of Oregon.
How it's worked for Mink
Neufeldt's reopened in May and Mink was glad to return to work. But her bartending jobs didn't come back because bars in Oregon were forced to close at 10 p.m.
Then in late June she got sick with coronavirus-type symptoms.She tested negative for COVID-19, but missed more weeks of work and went back on unemployment.
Mink again returned to work in July, but during the Labor Day Wildfires in September, Aumsville was placed under a “Be Set” evacuation order, forcing Neufeldt'sto close again.Mink was again out of work and onto unemployment for another week.
She returned to work for a couple months, but Neufeldt’s was forced to close again as of Nov. 18 due to an executive order from Brown.
Mink was out of work for so much of this year, she burned through the 26 weeks of regular unemployment and now is onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, a CARES Actprogram thatprovides 13 additional weeks of benefits to people who have exhausted regular unemployment.
The $188 weekly unemployment checks Mink is now receiving won’t cover her $1,200 monthly rent. She looked into rental assistance programs but says she doesn't qualify because she hasn't fallen behind in rent. Yet.
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She considers herself fortunate to have recently been approved for a $670 monthly pandemic daycare assistance program that will help her pay most of the cost for her daughter. And she is receiving the maximum food stamp benefits of $300 per month.
But there isn’t enough left over to buy Christmas presents for her daughter.
“I didn’t really get to do anything for my daughter’s birthday even,” Mink said. “My daughter wants to do things and I can’t. She’s like, ‘Mom, can I have a happy meal?’ I can’t even spend the $4 for a Happy Meal.
“I literally dumped every single change jar. I have no savings left, whatsoever.”
Bill Poehler covers Marion County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@statesmanjournal.comor Twitter.com/bpoehler
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