Extended Benefits Come to an End with Unemployment Still High
http://www.offthechartsblog.org/extended-benefits-come-to-an-end-with-unemployment-still-high/
Posted by: Chad Stone
Posted in: Recession and Recovery, Unemployment
After this week, no state will provide additional weeks of emergency federal unemployment insurance (UI) payments through the Extended Benefits (EB) program, as federal UI benefits continue to wind down. As we’ve explained previously, EB will no longer be available in any state, not because most states’ economies have improved to anywhere near pre-recession conditions, but because they have not significantly deteriorated in the past three years.
Idaho was the last state offering EB, but its most recent three-month average unemployment rate of 7.7 percent did not meet the necessary criterion of being at least 10 percent higher than the comparable rate in any of the three previous years. As a result, Idaho “triggered off” EB as of the week ending July 21 and will make its final EB payments this week.
The table below shows the number of people in each state affected by the premature end of EB. The maps below that show the maximum number of weeks of UI that will be available in each state beginning next week, compared with the maximum number of weeks that were available at the beginning of the year.
More About Chad Stone
Chad Stone is Chief Economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where he specializes in the economic analysis of budget and policy issues.
Full bio | Blog Archive | Research archive at CBPP.org
Well all the states appear to have a high rate why not grant the 7weeks of EB
The political scientist Larry Bartels has found (and measured) that members of Congress respond much more strongly to the preferences of their affluent constituents than their poor ones. And for affluent people, there is essentially no recession. For affluent people, there is essentially no unemployment. If you look at both parties, they are pretty apathetic to the middle class that is in poverty except in political speeches. Food banks are running out of food but everyone acts like its not their problem. The poor is at the lack-of-mercy of affluent people who controls our Nation’s Capital.
This is happening because of illusions that there are more jobs out there than actually exist (13+ Million chasing 3.4 Million open positions with skills and geographic mismatches) and the unemployed (from no fault of their own) being subject to anti-welfare rhetoric.