NAV confirms that 37,000 people will have to wait until September to receive the unemployment benefits they are entitled to. This is because the laid off have got their jobs back.
More than 430,000 people have applied for unemployment benefits during the corona crisis, and most of them applied in March and April. 67,000 have still not been able to process their unemployment benefit applications and more than half of them have to wait until September, writes Klassekampen.
“The rationale is that NAV has prioritized the applications from those who are without both a job and an employer, and thus are not considered as temporarily laid off from an employer. Then the applications from layoffs are processed and finally the applications from layoffs who are back at work”, explains knowledge director Yngvar Åsholt in NAV.
“37,000 of the remaining 67,000 people have returned to work after being laid off in March, April and May. These 37,000 have been informed that they will be given priority in September”, he tells the newspaper.
Åsholt points out that those who are laid off have an advantage in a way that they are associated with an employer and that those who return to work are better off than those who remain unemployed. The main reason for the late payment is still a large number of applications.
Minister of Labor Torbjørn Røe Isaksen (H) said this spring that NAV expected to finish unemployment benefit applications by the end of July. He now says that it is far too long for people to go five months without income.
“In the biggest unemployment crisis that Norway has had in peacetime, people have been more patient than we could expect”, says Isaksen.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
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