1.3m losing unemployment benefits Saturday

Boston Globe ^ | 12/28/2013 | Annie Lowrey

[SeekAndFind]

WASHINGTON — An emergency federal program that acts as a lifeline for 1.3 million jobless workers will end Saturday, drastically curtailing government support for the long-term unemployed and setting the stage for a major political fight in the new year.

The program, in place since the recession started in 2008, provides up to 47 weeks of supplemental unemployment insurance payments to jobless people looking for work. Its expiration is expected to have far-reaching ramifications for the economy, cutting job growth by about 300,000 positions next year and pushing hundreds of thousands of households below the poverty line.

An extension of the unemployment program did not make it into the two-year budget deal that was passed just before Congress left on its winter recess. When the federal program expires, just 1 in 4 unemployed Americans will receive jobless benefits — the smallest proportion in half a century.

[Gene Eric]

Is that 1 or 2 years worth?

Hey, at least the unemployment rate will drop.

[Gene Eric]

Disturbing, isn’t it...

[BfloGuy]

I’m trying to figure out how this will “cut job growth”.

Yeah, isn't that one a hoot?

We are so far down the road of crazy that Democrats can claim that welfare payments grow the economy. Obviously, their contorted logic goes, withdrawing those benefits will shrink it.

The same was said of the government shutdown.

[Joan Kerrey]

Work place changes, technology, policy, routine and procedures change so rapidly these days that many of us who work full time at it are overwhelmed trying to keep up.

After 99 weeks away from my former job there is no way I could possibly come back to the job I was doing when I became unemployed.

It seems likely that older workers laid off will remain laid off as they’ll not be able to adjust to the new workplace, which includes their old job.

[Gaffer]

All I can say is you are atypical of the large part of UICs that are out there today. Look at the anecdotes that follow in this thread. Additionally, your age group only comprises about 6% of all the unemployed. You're a different generation and want a job.

Look at this:

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm

It will show you that the large majority of unemployed are less than half your age. And, this is where I maintain that by and large, continued extended UIC becomes a "gateway entitlement" (ala gateway 'drug') to worse financial conditions for this country.

For them, it's a lifetime of expected entitlement UIC first, SSDI, SNAP, WICs (yeah, they'll have more babies), EITC, Section 8 and then SSI for the babies when baby daddy skips out.