The vanguard of what could become armies of unemployment checks with enhanced $600 payments has started to roll out to jobless California residents, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday, an effort crafted to help blunt the brutal economic fallout of the coronavirus.
Officials have begun to deliver checks that include the regular state unemployment weekly payment from California, along with an additional $600 weekly payment financed by the federal government through the recently approved CARES Act.
“Some 224,000 checks went out yesterday (Sunday),” Gov, Newsom said during a news briefing on Monday.
The state’s Employment Development Department has been working around-the-clock, the governor said last week, to ensure the unemployment check deliveries were launched on Sunday.
The EDD office has been buried by what one EDD representative recently described as an “avalanche” of unemployment claims triggered by business layoffs amid the coronavirus woes.
State and local government agencies, along with shelter-in-place protocols to help curb the spread of the deadly bug, have unleashed widespread shutdowns of business locations.
“We are one of the first states to get these checks processed and transferred,” Gov. Newsom said Monday.
