For Jobless Gig Workers, Stimulus Bill Benefits No Silver Bullet

The prospect of the $2 trillion stimulus bill providing gig economy workers, freelancers, and contractors with urgent financial assistance may run into the reality of burdensome filing requirements and the mazes of overwhelmed bureaucracies.

Lawmakers modeled the stimulus bill’s measure to compensate workers who don’t qualify for traditional unemployment insurance, called the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, on an existing program for disaster relief. But the Disaster Unemployment Assistance program has never been used on anything close to the scale of the current jobless wave, as millions of people flood state unemployment insurance programs with initial claims.

“We’ve done a lot ...