Furloughed employees can now receive 'support payments' from employer and still be eligible for unemployment benefits

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The most recent mandate by South Carolina’s governor marks a change to who can be eligible for unemployment benefits in response to COVID-19’s increasing impact on employees, businesses and the state economy.

Gov. Henry McMaster’s newest executive order allows furloughed employees to still qualify for unemployment benefits and receive a “COVID-19 support payment” from their employer.

Last week saw another record number of people file for benefits across the state, including 2,433 in Sumter County and 85,018 statewide. Before the pandemic slowed businesses and the economy to a halt, the state Department of Employment and Workforce was averaging about 2,000 new claims a week.

“Every day, our primary objective is to protect South Carolinians, but we also must act to protect the state’s economy,” McMaster said in a news release this week. “This order does both. It allows our businesses to take care of their employees as best as they can and will help our economy recover from this unprecedented time.”

The executive order directs DEW to consider a “voluntary payment, or series of payments, made by an employer to an employee in response to furloughing the employee” as a form of severance pay, meaning an employer can voluntarily make one or multiple “non-wage” payments to employees upon furloughing them, and the employees will not lose eligibility for unemployment benefits.

Before, people could not be receiving any payments from an employer to be eligible for unemployment benefits.

“Our state’s workforce and employers have never faced a crisis of this magnitude,” said Sara Hazzard, president and CEO of the S.C. Manufacturers Alliance in the news release. “On behalf of our state’s manufacturing community and the more than 250,000 South Carolinians they employ, I want to thank Gov. McMaster for issuing this executive order to provide flexibility for businesses to assist employees during this time of need.”