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By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Unemployment benefits will go up while tax rates will go down, especially for the wealthiest Arizonans, under the budget deal forged by Gov. Doug Ducey and legislative Republican leaders.
Massive unemployment triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic restrictions highlighted Arizona’s second-worst-in-the-nation unemployment benefits. The maximum of $240 that unemployed Arizonans are eligible for is lower than every state except Mississippi, which offers $235.
While Ducey repeatedly rebuffed calls to increase that amount throughout the pandemic, the budget plan he agreed to does exactly that — but only under certain circumstances. Out-of-work Arizonans would be eligible to receive up to $320 per week, but only if the state’s unemployment rate is at or below 5%, and only if the unemployment trust fund that employers pay into has at least $1.1 billion. And those benefits would only be available for 24 weeks, not 26 weeks, as the current benefits are.
“The employer tax rate is set by the amount of money in the trust fund, so the more that’s in the trust fund, the less that the employers have to contribute to it,” Matt Gress, the governor’s budget director, told reporters on Wednesday.
Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, and Rep. David Cook, R-Globe, ran legislation this session to increase the weekly benefits. Cook’s plan would have raised the weekly amount to $300, while Fann’s proposal would’ve raised it to $320, and again to $400 if the unemployment trust fund reached about $1.5 billion.
At $320, Arizona would be tied with Missouri for the fifth-lowest unemployment benefits of the 50 states.
