Extension of Jobless Benefits

Posted on November 18, 2009 by townsend

• Jobless benefits set to expire unless Congress acts, By Erik Eckholm, November 18, 2009, New York Times: “About one million laid-off workers will see their unemployment benefits end in January unless Congress acts quickly to renew existing federally paid extensions, according to a new survey and legislators and state officials. The record-long extension of emergency benefits that was hastily signed into law on Nov. 6 was widely praised as an essential lifeline for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had spent a year or more in fruitless searches for jobs. The new law provided up to 14 weeks of federally paid aid to unemployed people who had exhausted existing state and federal limits, benefits that already extended up to 79 weeks in many states. And for the majority of states with particularly high unemployment, it added an additional six weeks of payments, bringing the potential total to 99 weeks…”
• Extension of jobless benefits won’t help many, By Jane M. Von Bergen, November 17, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer: “On the same day the U.S. Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate had reached a landmark 10.2 percent, President Obama signed a law extending unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks in some states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey. ‘I was so relieved,’ said Dawn Brown, 41, a mother of two from North Wales who lost her market-data research job in June. ‘It just took all the worry away.’ But the new law won’t help Brown at all – or anybody else who has been laid off since late June. Not only that, but, as written, no one in Pennsylvania, New Jersey or any of the nation’s other high-unemployment states will be eligible for the last six weeks of the 20-week extension. It’s all a matter of timing. And the timing is tricky…”
• Jobless Tennesseans won’t get as many extra benefits, By Bonna Johnson, November 18, 2009, The Tennessean: “Additional unemployment benefits that Congress approved for the jobless earlier this month won’t be as sweet as most people expected due to fine print in the law. The upshot is that instead of 20 weeks of extra benefits at a maximum of $300 a week, many Tennesseans probably will draw only 14 more weeks – on top of 79 weeks previously received – before the aid runs out due to a Dec. 31 cutoff date. The mix-up is confusing and confounding to many jobless workers who have exhausted or are about to run out of their government aid. Approximately 35,500 Tennesseans getting unemployment checks could be affected. Still, some people said they’re just happy to be getting anything…”