Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Wednesday, June 30th. I'm Nyla Boudou. Here's what you need to know today.

The latest from the Florida building collapse. Plus, reparations via Venmo.

But first, the disappearing unemployment lifeline is today's one big thing.

During the pandemic, self-employed, gig and freelance workers were eligible for unemployment benefits.

Now, as states start cutting back on those pandemic era programs, that subset of workers is about to get shut out of these benefits.

Axios's markets reporter Courtney Brown has been tracking this and joins us now. Good morning, Courtney.

Good morning, Nyla.

Courtney, this type of worker typically hasn't been eligible for jobless assistance. How did this change during the pandemic?

Well, the pandemic kind of ushered in a new era in America for unemployment support for these workers who represent a huge subset of our economy.

These are Uber drivers. These are people with limited work history. These are people who work in a salon who may not be considered a true employee when the pandemic hit and the first relief package was passed.

All of these workers became eligible for unemployment.

Do we know how many people actually use this or relied on these benefits?

Oh, this is a point of contention if you go and ask economists how many people are relying on this program.

Officially, it's nearly six million people collecting unemployment through this program. That's out of about 14.8 million who are on the unemployment roles altogether.

But there's been so many issues with this program in state labor departments across the country.

A lot of economists say that number is inflated for fraud, for reporting problems, things of that nature.

Does this reflect a change? Courtney, ending benefits for the subset of self-employed gig and freelance workers.

In how states are approaching these benefits in this space of the pandemic?

What we're seeing right now between states moving to cut off the extra unemployment money that folks are receiving and ending unemployment programs altogether for some workers.

It's this grand experiment that's underway in parts of the country.

You know, I think governors are saying that they're cutting off these programs because they want to coax people back to work.

But it's really unclear. There's very little data so far to back up for sure whether this approach is working or not.

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