Unemployment insurance isn’t all it’s said to be
When the Chrysler plant in Newark, Del., shut its doors on Dec. 19, more than 1,000 workers there suddenly joined the ranks of the unemployed.
At least they will be able to get unemployment insurance.
Most jobless workers can’t.
Across the United States, only 37 percent of workers who lose their jobs typically collect unemployment benefits, according to U.S. Labor Department statistics.
They often miss out because they didn’t earn enough while working, or their work history was not continuous enough to make them eligible under state unemployment laws — usually written in the pre-computer era when tracking payrolls was much slower.
"I think it’s a shock to people that the safety net is in such sad shape," said Maurice Emsellem, co-policy director at the National Employment Law Project, a pro-worker organization advocating for the bill. "A lot of people fall through the cracks."
At a time when the recession is a year old and the number of unemployed has risen to 10.3 million, there is a real question about where federal unemployment dollars should go.
Should they be sent directly to states’ strained employment trust funds, enabling states to keep from raising unemployment taxes on already beleaguered employers? Or should they go to expanding eligibility, supporting states whose policies provide help to more people, who in turn will spend their benefits and boost the economy?
Last year, that approach became part of a federal bill — the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act — passed in the House, but not the Senate, although then-Sen. Barack Obama was a sponsor.
Advocates like Emsellem always try to expand benefits in tough times, said Douglas J. Holmes, president of the National Foundation for Unemployment Compensation and Workers’ Compensation, a Washington business group. It would be better to skip the debate and ship the money to the state trust funds quickly, he said. "Federal money is not designed to dictate benefits state by state."
Get more business news, blogs and opinionThose who fall through the cracks tend to be low-wage, part-time, seasonal or new workers — not like the 1,000 autoworkers laid off in Delaware.
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