Washington state lawmakers approved legislation that would save employers nearly $1 billion in unemployment taxes this year, raise the minimum weekly jobless benefit, and provide benefits to some workers who quit for health reasons.<\/p>\n
But some worker advocates said Senate Bill 5061, which passed the House on Friday and now goes to Gov. Jay Inslee for a signature, didn\u2019t go far enough to address workers affected by the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The legislation, a top priority for the new session, will blunt what would have been a $1.7 billion increase in employers\u2019 unemployment taxes through 2025 that the state would have needed to cover the unexpected costs of unemployment claims during the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington state lawmakers approved legislation that would save employers nearly $1 billion in unemployment taxes this year, raise the minimum weekly jobless benefit, and provide benefits to some workers who quit for health reasons. But some worker advocates said Senate Bill 5061, which passed the House on Friday and now goes to Gov. Jay Inslee for a signature, didn\u2019t go far enough to address workers affected by the pandemic. The legislation, a top priority for the new session, will blunt what would have been a $1.7 billion increase in employers\u2019 unemployment taxes through 2025 that the state would have needed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":2421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"yoast_head":"\n