Screwed Unemployed Workers and Rising Concentrated Poverty

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/24-5

Unemployment insurance and poverty

by Greg Kaufmann
Published on Friday, February 24, 2012 by The Nation

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, co-chair of the Congressional Out of Poverty Caucus, voted against the recent extension of unemployment benefits because it shortened the maximum number of weeks a jobless worker could qualify.

“Instead of scaling back unemployment benefits we need to be adding weeks to help people get by when there continues to be four workers in line for each job,” said Lee.

She makes a hell of a point.

While most of the media has focused on the Democrats “pretty much getting what they wanted,” it has given short shrift to what this deal means for the long-term unemployed, currently at near-record levels, with 43 percent of unemployed people jobless for more than six months. Under the new deal they will receive fewer weeks of unemployment benefits than was available between the end of 2009 and last year, with the maximum reduced from 99 weeks to 73 weeks by September 2012.

So what are the consequences of the Democrats “win” for the long-term unemployed?

A new report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO)—“Unemployment Insurance: Economic Circumstances of Individuals Who Exhausted Benefits”—gives some indication of what might lie ahead for these folks and others not even fortunate enough to qualify for unemployment benefits in the first place.

The GAO notes that of the 15.4 million workers who lost jobs from 2007 to 2009, half received Unemployment Insurance (UI), half didn’t, and about 2 million exhausted benefits by early 2010.

That group of 2 million had an unemployment rate of 46 percent in January 2010, and a poverty rate of 18 percent compared to 13 percent among working-age adults. More than 40 percent of those who had exhausted their benefits had incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line (below about $35,000 for a family of three), which is the level where many economists believe people start really struggling to pay for the basics.

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/24-5