The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission (OESC) is hosting a virtual town hall for the general public tomorrow (Friday, April 10) at 1:00 PM. With almost 17 million workers filing for unemployment across the country in the past few weeks (and more than 50,000 in Oklahoma last week alone), employers and employees may have questions. Additional information may be found here and you can register for the (free) town hall here.

A press release from the OESC earlier today states that the Department of Labor is in the process of finalizing its guidance on unemployment funds available through the CARES Act for nontraditional workers, and the OESC is “optimistic” those funds will be available next week. CARES Act unemployment funds can be backdated to March 30.

The OESC has also advised that it was able to begin making the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance additional weekly payment of $600 authorized by the CARES Act to qualified individuals on April 7. However, some recipients received a duplicate payment for that first week. Those recipients will not receive a $600 payment for week ending April 11. The OESC advises the error has been corrected.

By Rebecca D. Bullard, rbullard@dsda.com