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…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty