Governor: Arkansas dropping $300-a-month COVID unemployment assistance

wireready_05-07-2021-21-16-05_00128_asaatdesk

The State of Arkansas will be opting out of the federal government’s supplemental unemployment assistance program, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Friday afternoon.

The governor has directed the Division of Workforce Services to end the state’s participation in the program after June 26. The federal supplement provided an additional $300 per month to those receiving unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The programs were implemented to assist the unemployed during the pandemic when businesses were laying off employees and jobs were scarce,” Hutchinson said. “As we emerge from COVID-19, retail and service companies, restaurants, and industry are attempting to return to pre-pandemic unemployment levels, but employees are as scarce today as jobs were a year ago. The $300 federal supplement helped thousands of Arkansans make it through this tough time, so it served a good purpose. Now we need Arkansans back on the job so that we can get our economy back to full speed.”

Arkansas becomes the third state to announce that it was dropping the federal assistance program. The governors of Montana and South Carolina already have opted out of similar programs for those states.

WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI