Just 58% of unemployment checks arrived on time, leaving Americans waiting for cash as the pandemic left them jobless

• A new report from Bloomberg found that many unemployed Americans did not receive benefits on time.
• In some cases, those delayed benefits added up to thousands, with workers waiting months.
• Benefits have been continually delayed throughout the pandemic, prompting calls for unemployment reform.

Even before 7.5 million Americans lost all of their federal unemployment benefits on Labor Day, many workers were still waiting to simply receive the original benefits they had applied for, Bloomberg reports.

The report said that, according to the Department of Labor, by the year ending June 30, just 58% of unemployment claims around the country were paid out in 21 days - far below the agency's "acceptable level of performance" of 87% of first-time payments going out in 21 days.

While that data is just through the end of June, many unemployed Americans may still be suffering from delayed payments. Senior policy advisor at the Department of Labor Michele Evermore told Bloomberg, "I'm not seeing a lot of states meeting that benchmark yet."

One laid-off worker in Maryland, Laura Ulrich, told Bloomberg she'd been contacting her state's officials all summer in an effort to get over $14,000 in benefits (she had filed for benefits in January); she received $11,200 just this past weekend.

Getting benefits paid out on time has been a continual struggle during the pandemic. A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that, in August 2020, "half of states made at least 54 percent of payments within 21 days." By May 2021, half of states made at least 66% of payments in 21 days - still below that acceptability threshold. The efficiency of initial payment also varied wildly between states, meaning that jobless workers in one state may have gotten payments days or months before peers in different states.

Some of that can be chalked up to underfunded and overwhelmed state unemployment systems, which had to accommodate both a suite of new federal programs that made millions of workers newly eligible, as well as managing an influx of millions of claims when the pandemic hit.

But, as Bloomberg Businessweek previously reported, lingering claims have had acute impacts on some left waiting. In one case, according to Bloomberg, former Uber driver Ralph Wyncoop applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) in May 2020; he didn't receive his benefits until the day before Christmas. In the time spent waiting, Wyncoop had a heart attack and was evicted. He died in a motel in March 2021.

Those delays come against the backdrop of a fiscal cliff, where at least 7.5 million Americans have lost their federal benefits as programs expired Monday. The White House chose not to step in to extend those benefits, although it did urge states to use American Rescue Plan funds as needed to continue benefits or send out relief payments to impacted workers. But states so far haven't done that, and some said further congressional action was needed to actually assist those workers and pay out costly benefits.

An unemployment extension never came, but reform to the unemployment insurance system could be up on the table as Democrats begin to hash out their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. Top Democrats called on President Biden to permanently reform the UI system in April, and, in the initial American Families Plan rollout, the White House pledged to work with lawmakers on putting in place reforms. However, the Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports that people close to negotiations say there "appears to be little momentum" in that package.

"To really fix things we need comprehensive UI reform and 10 years of effort," the Labor Department's Evermore told Bloomberg.