Work search requirements for unemployment money resume Sunday in Louisiana

Beginning Sunday, Aug. 9, jobless Louisianans will have to prove they’re actively seeking employment in order to receive unemployment benefits.

In April, Governor John Bel Edwards suspended these work search rules, which require unemployed people to make contact about a job with at least three businesses each week.

The state will not dish out the cash unless it receives paperwork proving correspondence between the businesses and the unemployed person, WAFB reports.

“The state benefit is [up to] $247 each week, and people are not going to be able to survive on that,” Gov. Edwards said Thursday, Aug. 6. “It is time to get those who can back into a job and find work, and there are several thousand jobs available in Louisiana.”

Edwards says he made the move, in part, because the state is running out of its unemployment savings. If Congress does not replenish the dwindling pot of money or make federal loans forgivable, a state law will trigger an automatic tax increase on businesses.

The savings account was valued at more than $1.1 billion before the coronavirus pandemic, but is now worth less than $300 million.

The rule will be reinstated a week after the federal government’s additional $600 unemployment benefit expired. Some businesses have struggled to keep workers on the payroll because those employees could make more at home on unemployment than at their jobs.