Labor & Employment Law

10 States Fail to Act to Qualify for Long-Term Jobless Aid

By Mike Hall

In a bitter battle late last year, Republicans in Congress filibustered an extension of the emergency unemployment insurance (UI) program for more than 1.4 million long-term jobless workers?and they didn’t approve the bill until they won an extension of Bush tax cuts for the rich.

The legislation will keep the program alive through 2011. It will be a vital lifeline in an economy where the jobless rate has been more than 9 percent for 20 straight months and is not expected to significantly drop anytime soon.

Workers who have exhausted their regular months of federal and state UI benefits without finding a job qualify for the emergency program. There are currently 6.5 million workers jobless for six months or more. That represents 44.3 percent of all unemployed workers.

But as Mitchell Hirsch at UnemployedWorkers.org points out, 10 states that qualify for the federally funded program that provides an additional 13 or 20 weeks of benefits have yet to pass state legislation to accept the funds.  The states are Arkansas, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.

Hirsch calls their failure to act ?mind-boggling.?

As many as 244,000 long-term unemployed job-seekers in these states could be receiving these federally paid benefits in the next 12 months if their governors and legislatures were to simply enact the kind of basic EB [extended benefits]?enabling legislation that is on the books in nearly every other state.

He points out that not only would jobless workers and their families benefit, states’ economies would as well.

These states could be providing EB to help thousands upon thousands of struggling families?at very little cost to the states themselves…every dollar of unemployment insurance spent by jobless workers and their families creates between $1.60 and $2.00 of additional economic activity.

If the states were to enact the emergency UI-enabling legislation, long-term jobless workers in Arkansas, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming would be eligible for 13 weeks of additional benefits, while unemployed workers in Louisiana and Mississippi would receive up to 20 weeks.

With the extension of full federal funding for the UI insurance, Hirsch asks:

What are these states waiting for? There’s no excuse for states to wait any longer to take the needed legislative initiatives.

With state legislatures coming into session, the AFL-CIO, National Employment Law Project (NELP) and allied advocates will work to pass legislation in those 10 states.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 11, 2011 (boomark / email).