Subsidized jobs: A faint echo of the New Deal, By Christine Vestal, June 18, 2010, Stateline.org: “In rural Winston County, Mississippi, Taylor Machine Works – best known for its Big Red forklifts – is the primary employer. After the recession hit in late 2008, the company shed nearly 200 of its 500 jobs and would not be rehiring anyone now if it weren’t for a subsidized employment program Mississippi launched with the help of federal stimulus money. Nationwide, 32 states are tapping into a $5 billion emergency fund under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare-to-work program – to help small businesses, nonprofits and public hospitals hire and train unemployed workers at a time when few organizations are ready to take on the added cost. This is not exactly the Works Progress Administration. During the Great Depression, the federal government subsidized employment for more than 8.5 million jobless workers under the WPA. Although maligned for its massive cost and the fact that millions of workers were collecting paychecks directly from the federal government, others credited the New Deal jobs program with returning dignity and hope to millions of American families…”
Day: June 21, 2010
State Jobless Benefits Fund – Utah
Utah’s jobless trust fund is about to go broke, By Tony Semerad, June 20, 2010, Salt Lake Tribune: “Devastated by the recession, Utah’s trust fund for paying jobless benefits is now expected to go broke. The unemployment trust fund, which just two years ago held $855 million, continues to drain rapidly as record numbers of out-of-work Utahns draw weekly benefits. At current rates, state analysts are estimating the fund will run out of money as early as fall of 2011. ‘We are projecting that we will go insolvent,’ Kristen Cox, executive director of the Utah Department of Workforce Services, recently told officials who set trust fund policy. The fund holds about $384 million now, and is replenished by an average of about $140 million a year in premiums paid by employers. That balance ranks as the fifth healthiest among the states, dozens of which have seen their trust funds wiped out since 2008…”
Health Insurance Coverage and Employment
- Number of uninsured jumped by nearly 3 million in 2009, By Steven Reinberg, June 20, 2010, USA Today: “For some Americans, health care reform may be arriving none too soon: The number of U.S. adults not covered by health insurance jumped by 2.9 million people from 2008 to 2009. In 2009 – the year in which the latest statistics are available – 46.3 million American adults had no health insurance, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This means one in five working-age adults is uninsured, and the situation is still worse in some states: nearly one in four Texans, for example, lack any form of health coverage…”
- 4 in 10 in Michigan uninsured, on public plan, By Patricia Anstett, June 20, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “The impact of the state’s sour economy is clear in a new report: More than 3.8 million Michiganders — nearly 4 of 10 people who live here — were uninsured or covered by a public program. Michigan also sank from best in the nation to sixth-best among states with the most uninsured children between 2005 and 2008, according to the annual Cover Michigan report to be released Monday by the Ann Arbor-based Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation. A partnership of the University of Michigan and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, the center compiles some of the most comprehensive data in the state on health insurance coverage. Michigan still has some of the nation’s most affordable rates, ranking ninth-lowest in yearly premiums, the report found…”
- Health aid urged for low-wage workers, By Kay Lazar, June 20, 2010, Boston Globe: “Thousands of uninsured Massachusetts workers in low-wage jobs are ineligible for state-subsidized health coverage, but they will qualify for these low-cost plans under the new national health care overhaul – in 2014. Now, some consumer advocates, arguing that the wait is unfair and a black eye for the state, want the Patrick administration and legislators to launch a program to cover at least part of this group. Administration officials, already facing huge budget deficits, say the state can’t afford the tens of millions of dollars it would cost to subsidize additional workers’ insurance…”