Many of the estimated 400,000 federal workers who were furloughed during the government shutdown could get two paychecks to compensate them for their missed time at work.
The temporary-spending bill Congress passed late Wednesday night — to end the budget standoff and raise the debt limit — provides back compensation to workers furloughed since Oct. 1.
Workers who were forced to take the time off also were eligible for unemployment. And apparently, many of them did.
According to Fox News, one-third of new unemployment claims filed in New Mexico came from federal workers.
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It's unclear, however, if they will have to repay state benefits received once they collect their federal back pay.
In Oregon,
a state official told Fox that federal workers there who collected unemployment won't have to repay it.
The spokesman for the WorkSource Oregon Employment Department, however, said he did not know how many federal workers received unemployment.
Washington, D.C., and Maryland also paid out millions in unemployment benefits to about 24,000 furloughed workers, according to Fox.
That, however, is only
a fraction of all the workers affected by the shutdown.
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