For hundreds of thousands of unemployed Louisianans, dwindling aid slated to run out after Christmas
The last time Will Walker worked a bartending shift, he was slinging drinks at the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club’s annual ball at the Ernest Morial Convention Center.
Within a few weeks, hundreds of makeshift hospital beds for coronavirus patients filled the convention center and Walker’s bartending gigs there and at the Superdome were a distant memory.
Unemployment benefits eased the crash, at least briefly. While Louisiana pays among the lowest benefits in the country, capped at $247 a week, a federal expansion of benefits added another $600 to each weekly payout for the first few months. That buoyed household incomes, and even expanded some of them, as the national economy collapsed and previously unfathomable numbers of workers lost their jobs.
The extra $600 disappeared at the end of July, though it was briefly replaced with another federal stop-gap boost of $300 a week for many workers, courtesy of an executive order from President Donald Trump. But that benefit ended in mid-September after six weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of Louisianans to scrape by on $247 or less each week as they hunt for jobs in an economy that has started to rebound, but is still badly damaged.
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