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R48447 — Unemployment Insurance: Legislative Issues in the 119th Congress

Reports · published 2026-04-14 · v2 · Active · crsreports.congress.gov ↗

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Authors
Katelin P. Isaacs · Julie M. Whittaker
Report id
R48447
Summary

The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a joint federal-state partnership that consists of two types of benefits: (1) permanently authorized programs, including the Unemployment Compensation (UC) and Extended Benefit (EB) programs; and (2) temporary federal UI benefits created by congressional action to supplement the UC and EB programs during recessions. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) provides oversight of state UC and EB programs and the state administration of federal UI benefits. Although there are broad requirements under federal law regarding UC benefits and financing, the program specifics are set under each state’s laws, resulting in 53 different UC programs operated in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. States operate their own UC and EB programs and administer any temporary federal UI benefits. State UC programs determine the weekly benefit amount and the number of weeks of UC available to unemployed workers. Most states provide up to 26 weeks of UC to eligible individuals. EB payment amounts and durations are based on each state’s UC program rules, with additional federal requirements specified in federal law. The UI system’s two primary objectives are to provide temporary and partial wage replacement to involuntarily unemployed workers and to stabilize the economy during recessions. The UC program, created under the Social Security Act of 1935, provides unemployment benefits to eligible individuals who become involuntarily unemployed for economic reasons and meet state-established eligibility rules. To augment the UC program, federal law includes an automatic expansion of the regular UC benefit with the EB program, which was established by the Federal-State Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 1970 (EUCA; P.L. 91-373). EB may provide up to an additional 13 or 20 weeks of benefits once regular UC benefits are exhausted, depending on worker eligibility, state law, additional federal eligibility requirements, and state economic conditions. The 119th Congress has expressed interest in oversight of UI programs, with a focus on improper payments—especially fraudulent overpayments of the expired COVID-19 pandemic programs and policy proposals to prevent and recover UI overpayments. (For details on these temporary UI measures, see CRS Report R46687, Unemployment Insurance (UI) Benefits: Permanent-Law Programs and the COVID-19 Pandemic Response.) For example, Section 73100 of the FY2025 reconciliation act (P.L. 119-21; enacted on July 4, 2025) prohibits states from paying certain federal unemployment benefits to individuals whose wages during a certain period exceeded $1,000,000. Additionally, on March 11, 2025, the House of Representatives passed the Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act (H.R. 1156). This bill would extend the statute of limitations from 5 to 10 years for federal criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions for fraud related to COVID-19-pandemic UI benefits as well as rescind certain amounts of UI administrative funding. In addition to P.L. 119-21 and H.R. 1156, several other bills addressing UI program integrity have been introduced in the 119th Congress, including H.R. 1119, H.R. 7306, H.R. 7847, S. 121, S. 1761, S. 3760, and S. 4016. Other UI legislation introduced in this Congress includes proposals related to modernizing UI programs and benefits (H.R. 4439 and S. 2312), ending the taxation of UI benefits (H.R. 2655), amending the consequences of federal UC loans to states (H.R. 1959), changing UC eligibility requirements for certain workers involved in strikes or lockouts (H.R. 4424, H.R. 4439, H.R. 5206, S. 2312, and S. 2731), providing UI benefits to federal workers and servicemembers who were excepted from furlough during a government shutdown (H.R. 1988), restricting payment of federal unemployment benefits for those with high adjusted gross income levels (S. 1761; generally the same proposal enacted as Section 73100 of P.L. 119-21), amending the Self-Employment Assistance (SEA) program (H.R. 6431), and providing additional funding or making other changes to Reemployment Service and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) (S. 3343 and S. 3379).

Bills cited (22)

Curated by CRS — every bill listed in this report's relatedMaterials. Edge type cited_in_report, gold confidence.

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