Timeline, New Details On $600 Federal Unemployment Checks For CT

HARTFORD, CT — The wait for the federal unemployment stimulus payment is over for people getting state benefits. Tuesday morning, officials announced that the state labor department finally "successfully programmed its computer system" and begun issuing the first round of weekly federal stimulus payments to filers receiving state unemployment benefits, with the first batch of payments having been issued this past weekend.

The additional $600 weekly payment, known as Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, was created as part of the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the federal CARES Act.

It is retroactive to March 29 and will be provided through July 25.

For those who already received unemployment benefits for previous weeks — such as April 4, 11, and 18 — the agency will be providing retroactive payments as a lump sum by the end of this week.

Claimants can check their online accounts on the CTDOL website at filectui.com and see the deposits were issued over the weekend. Those who receive payments through direct deposit should begin seeing the additional amount appearing in their bank accounts by Tuesday.

The first $600 payments totaled more than $89 million. When combined with nearly $51 million issued in state benefits, the agency provided $140 million in unemployment benefits last weekend.

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Gov. Ned Lamont said the Connecticut Department of Labor "worked day and night to come up with the technological fixes to ensure benefits were distributed in a timely way to our residents."

“There are hundreds of thousands in our state relying on our Department of Labor to help get them through this crisis, and the state’s loyal and hard-working team never lost sight of that," Lamont said in a news release. "This is a difficult time for so many, and I appreciate that these new benefits are being distributed.”

Labor commissioner Kurt Westby said the additional $600 is being added to any benefit issued this past weekend and onward.

The reason for the delay in getting these federal payments to the unemployed was the antiquated 40-year-old mainframe COBOL operating system the state has been using for decades to process claims.

Westby said labor department staff, partners and assisting agencies' effort was tireless and the agency has "now processed over 340,000 of the 402,000 claim applications filed since March 13."

The CTDOL continues to work nonstop to implement the remaining two recently established federal stimulus programs:

• Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which provides benefits for self-employed individuals among others, and
• Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), a 13-week extension that allows eligible claimants to collect the additional weeks after exhausting the 26 weeks of state benefits.

The agency expects to begin accepting applications for PUA on April 30 and plans to have PEUC in operation by mid-May. Both programs will be retroactive.