On June 12, 2021, two actions taken by Governor Reynolds affecting workforce participants and employers will go into effect. Unemployed Iowans will no longer receive the additional $300/week in federal dollars that have augmented standard state unemployment benefits. The Governor took this action to create a greater incentive for the unemployed to rejoin the workforce citing 60,000 unemployed Iowans, an unemployment rate of 3.7% and more than 66,000 job listings on the IowaWorks website. 

The second change affects employers directly. Early in the pandemic, as federal and state government policies forced Iowans from the workforce, Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) suspended the practice of tracking unemployment claims by an employer for the purpose of charging each employer for their workforce’s unemployment experience and reflecting that experience in individually higher unemployment tax rates. Starting June 12, 2021, IWD will resume tracking the unemployment experience of each employer and it will once again factor in determining that employer's unemployment tax rates.