Unemployment at 33-year high; insurance fund running dry, By Kay Lazar and Robert Gavin, October 16, 2009, Boston Globe: “Unemployment in Massachusetts has reached its highest level since the 1970s, officials said yesterday as they also disclosed that the state will exhaust a fund that helps laid-off workers pay for health insurance by the end of next month. State officials said they are considering a number of emergency measures, including imposing higher costs on the unemployed and raising fees on employers, to close a gap that could exceed $50 million by April. ‘Every option is on the table,’ Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Suzanne Bump said in an interview after her staff briefed an advisory board of labor and business leaders yesterday. ‘Nothing stays the same.’ The unrelenting rise in unem ployment will also trigger an automatic 40 percent increase in the tax businesses are required to contribute for unemployment benefits. In January, the tax will increase from an average of $594 per employee to $832…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty