Today the unemployment rate is 8.1% down from 9.9% in November, 2009, but still not down to pre-recession unemployment figures. There are three job seekers for every one job available. Those who have been unemployed for lengthy periods are about to lose their unemployment benefits, about half a million losing their benefits sooner than they thought.
In some states the number of weeks which unemployment benefits will be paid is being reduced, and due to changes in the application process as many as half of people applying for benefits will be denied.
Those in favor of extended benefits say the cuts being made are coming too soon. The chief economist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Chad Stone, said that Congress never curtailed extended benefits when the job market was so feeble.
“It’s moving in the wrong direction, and it’s occurring at a time when unemployment is very high,” said Stone.
The director of economic policy studies at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, Kevin A. Hassett said,
“I haven’t liked the 99-week solution from the beginning because it creates an environment where people are subsidized to become a structural unemployment problem.”
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