- Jobless benefits wrongly denied, By Marc Lifsher, February 25, 2014, Los Angeles Times: “Hundreds of thousands of jobless Californians last year appealed decisions of the troubled Employment Development Department, adding to months of delays in getting unemployment benefits. After holding hearings, administrative law judges at the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board rejected many of the EDD’s cursory, highly technical decisions. They threw out or revised more than half of the earlier denials, belatedly awarding long-sought assistance of up to $450 per week. The lengthy appeals added one more layer of woe for the state’s jobless to troubles at the EDD that included unanswered phone calls, glitchy computers and confusing paperwork…”
- Report: Average jobless benefit has fallen by 18.5 percent, By Richard Craver, February 20, 2014, Winston-Salem Journal: “The average benefit amount for unemployed North Carolinians has dropped by 18.5 percent since a state law went into effect July 1 that reduced the maximum weekly amount and number of weeks, an advocacy group said Thursday. The average weekly amount was $301.89 in June, with a maximum amount of $535, according to the left-leaning N.C. Budget & Tax Center. The cuts approved by the General Assembly lowered the maximum weekly amount to $350. By December, the average weekly amount had fallen to $245.98. That meant the average claimant received about $224 less in monthly benefits compared with June…”
Tag: Jobless benefits
State Unemployment Systems – Florida, Massachusetts
- Unemployment without benefits, By Matt Dixon, February 17, 2014, Florida Times-Union: “When lawmakers passed a $63 million ‘modernization’ of the state’s unemployment compensation system in 2011, proponents promised it would ‘improve the claims, benefits and appeals process.’ So far, the opposite has been true. Instead of streamlining the system, the changes have created a technological mess that has blocked or delayed badly needed benefits to more than 100,000 Floridians who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. The modernization project, dubbed ‘Project CONNECT,’ was passed along partisan lines, with Democrats and some legal groups in opposition. So far, many of their fears have been realized, according to a Times-Union investigation…”
- Jobless aid still eluding some in Mass., By Megan Woolhouse, February 18, 2014, Boston Globe: “Devastated by the layoff last year from her job of 15 years, Heidi Thompson-Totman found new hope when she was approved for a federally funded program that would provide her with up to about a year of unemployment benefits while she retrained to work as a graphic designer. Borrowing $2,000 to cover tuition and enrolling at North Shore Community College last fall, Thompson-Totman looked forward to completing her associate’s degree and getting back to work — until her weekly benefit of about $300 stopped without explanation two months ago. Now, she and her husband, barely getting by, are planning to sell their Boxford home so they can pay college tuition for their two children. ‘We are going downhill fast,’ said Thompson-Totman, 47. ‘We can’t make our bills.’ Thompson-Totman is among many jobless Massachusetts residents enrolled in or approved for retraining programs who had benefits mistakenly cut off or delayed because of another defect in the new $46 million computer system for managing unemployment claims…”
Long-term Unemployment Benefits
What do the jobless do when the benefits end?, By Ylan Q. Mui, February 11, 2014, Washington Post: “The end to federal jobless benefits for nearly 2 million people has sparked a bitter debate in Congress about whether Washington is abandoning desperate households or simply protecting strained government coffers. It is also providing real-time answers to a question economists have long pondered: How do people survive when they suddenly have no money coming in? Studies show that about a third of the people cut off from long-term unemployment benefits will find help from Social Security or other government programs. Others will cobble together dwindling savings or support from family. But most baffling to economists are the people who appear to come up with more-idiosyncratic solutions, which are tough to identify and almost impossible to track…”