Congress Extends Unemployment Benefits 13 Weeks
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In a dramatic victory for the 8.5 million out of work Americans, Congress passed an essentially “bulletproof” 13-week extension of unemployment benefits last week. Given that our economy is now losing 60,000 jobs a month due to lay-offs, job eliminations, and an otherwise sluggish economy, the action was overdue.
The very good news is that those who are already receiving an unemployment benefit will not have to reapply as they will be automatically extended. Those who have exhausted their benefit under the old limits will need to reapply, confirming that they are still unemployed and looking for work.
UP began agitating in late ‘07 for an extension of benefits by encouraging its members and friends to let their representatives know how they felt. We proudly joined with allied groups in pushing for the extension. According to UP founder and board member, Barbara Ehrenreich, “joining with allied organizations such as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and others in pushing for positive social change is a critically important part of UP’s overall strategy.”
EPI’s Jared Bernstein and UP board member agreed and observed that “the rationale for extending benefits was never in doubt. The question was whether UP and other groups could organize a successful coalition against some powerful forces. And the answer is: we could and we did.”
Tags: Economic-Policy-Institute, extenstion of unemployment benefits, Jared Bernstein
July 9th, 2008 at 7:54 am
This is great news of course, but for those of us who have never been eligible–not as earth shattering. If you have been part-time (like say the hundreds of adjunct faculty folks) or worked contract work or worked around parenting…you could be invisibly unemployed. Progress yes–solving the chronic under employment of educated workers–no.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:31 am
This is good news. Better news would be that the US was adding 200,000 jobs each month for the past 8 years and the extensions were not necessary.
Here is how our last 5 presidents have done:
Carter: 10.3 M jobs (215k/mo)
Reagan: 16.1 M jobs (168k/mo)
Bush I: 2.6 M jobs (54k/mo)
Clinton: 22.7 M jobs (237k/mo)
Bush II: 5.2 M jobs (58k/mo)
Like father, like son.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:10 am
No good for me. I’ve been “unemployed” (meaning, not working for someone else) since 2001, so I won’t qualify. I’ve been “self employed”, ie doing menial jobs, since my layoff, within the IT world (fixing computers, wiring networks, etc.) I haven’t made so LITTLE money in my life since my busboy job at a Sears coffee shop in the mid-70’s. In fact, I made so little last year that I did NOT qualify for a $600 “stimulus” check. So I’m about to lose my house; nearly all the equity is gone. What now? Don’t ask.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I have mixed emotions about this. Yes, after 9/11, I was unemployed for quite some time. So I took advantage of the extension. It kept me from losing my house.
Did the temp thing – what a joke. Tried another “field” – didn’t work out. But never found another decent “job.”
Am now in an offshoot of my old field. My knowledge and experience don’t count for anything. And I’m making what I made in 1994.
Yes, it’s rough for the wiser and downsized.
You are not alone!
July 9th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
As an employment counselor/job developer for a local government agency, I really don’t know what to tell people much of the time when they access my office looking for help in finding work.
The unskilled are sometimes easier to place ( but not as much anymore as a result of the construction collapse).
The higher skilled office type…a problem. It seems only the staffing companies find work and the jobs are with no benefits, of course.(And I know several staffing company head hunters who have lost their jobs recently.)
My advice for younger adults and recent high school grads- get certified in something, preferably a medical field.The higher degree of technical expertise-the better.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Tom’s numbers have confirmed for me what I have been suspecting for a long time: Bush is lying about the unemployment rate in the U.S.
In America, we need 120K jobs per month just to absorb young people into the job market. To that, you have to add jobs for 1.5M immigrant jobseekers who enter the country each year (1/3 illegally by conservative estimates). That would mean that we need a quarter of a million new jobs every month just to tread water. To that number we should also add the 250K “guest workers” that enter the U.S. each year. Of course there are also workers exiting the market, but even after deducting 60K retirees (monthly) from the market, we still need at least 180K per month to stay even.
The only way that Bush could be achieving a 5% unemployment rate on his record of 58K jobs per month (assuming that government statistics are not an outright lie) would be that at least 1 million workers are opting out of the labor market each year.