Prolonged Aid to Unemployed Is Running Out

[Mr. T]

Prolonged Aid to Unemployed Is Running Out

 

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

 

Because of emergency extensions already enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, the longest period since the unemployment insurance program was created in the 1930s. But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid.

 

Tens of thousands of workers have already used up their benefits, and the numbers are expected to soar in the months to come, reaching half a million by the end of September and 1.5 million by the end of the year, according to new projections by the National Employment Law Project, a private research group.

 

Unemployment insurance is now a lifeline for nine million Americans, with payments averaging just over $300 per week, varying by state and work history. While many recipients find new jobs before exhausting their benefits, large numbers in the current recession have been unable to find work for a year or more.

 

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Calls are rising for Congress to pass yet another extension this fall, possibly adding 13 more weeks of coverage in states with especially high unemployment. As of June, the national unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, reaching 15.2 percent in Michigan. Even if the recession begins to ease, economists say, jobs will remain scarce for some time to come.

 

“If more help is not on the way, by September a huge wave of workers will start running out of their critical extended benefits, and many will have nothing left to get by on even as work keeps getting harder to find,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director of the employment law project.

 

For many desperate job seekers, any extension will seem a blessing. Pamela C. Lampley of Dillon, S.C., said she sat outside the post office last month and cried because “it was the first Wednesday in quite some time that I’ve gone to the mailbox and left without an unemployment check.” The jobless rate in her state is 12.1 percent.

 

Ms. Lampley, 40, who is married with three children, lost her job as a human resources officer in January 2008 and had been receiving $351 a week, which covered the groceries and gas. Even so, she and her husband, who still has work as a machinist, were sinking into debt. Now, still poorer, she feels devastated because they cannot buy their son a laptop to take to college and she cannot give her 9-year-old son money for the movies.

 

In Ohio, where unemployment is 11.1 percent, Cathy Nixon, 39, a mother of four teenagers from Lorain, has been out of work for much of the time since June 2007, and her benefits — $313 a week — run out in September. Ms. Nixon is already fighting foreclosure and said she feared that when the benefits end, “we’ll be homeless.” She was unable to afford summer camp and baseball activities for her children, despite scrimping on basics.[/quote

 

 

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[BrownIndian]

It is a sad state of things and i think the govt should try more to bring about more jobs in the grass root levels for people to atleast make some living.

[ballpeen]

Good way to lower the unemployment figures...people off unemployment no longer count.

 

With no jobs, no home, or car, you might as well sit on the porch of some housing project.

 

 

[Mr. T]

As a nation it is a sad state to be in, but what we are faced with here is a Left Winged controled government who is more in touch with funding their pet projects than solving the problem of unemployment here in our country. while they continue to vote for spending more money and giving it away to special intrest groups they could care less that middle class americans are struggling all over.

 

I will bet you that within a month the Obama White House along with Pelosi Reid and Rahm. will come out and say that americans have been put back to work due to the stimulus, when the only thing that has happened is millions of unemployed workers exhaust their unemployment benefits so the rate of unemployment will take a small percentage down turn. That is until they decide to pass the Waxman energy (Cap & Trade Bill) then we shall see many of the smaller and medium size businessses dropping out due to the fact they wont be able to compete with higher energy taxes.