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The Department of Labor announced Thursday that 1,000 people have been charged for receiving $45.6 billion of fraudulent unemployment insurance (UI) payments since March 2020. The pandemic overwhelmed state offices responsible for distributing benefits, with 57 million people filing initial UI claims within five months of March 2020, the DOL-OIG reported. Fraudsters were successfully able to take advantage of the chaos, filing for claims in multiple states, using fraudulent emails and using the Social Security Numbers (SSN) of dead people and federal prisoners.. Federal and state governments together paid out roughly $794 in unemployment benefits between March 2020 and July...

We use micro data on earnings together with the details of each state’s UI system under the CARES Act to compute the entire distribution of current UI benefits. The median replacement rate is 134%. Two-thirds of UI eligible workers can receive benefits which exceed lost earnings and one-fifth can receive benefits at least double lost earnings. There is sizable variation in the effects of the CARES Act across occupations and states, with important distributional consequences. We show how alternative UI expansion policies would change the distribution of UI benefits and thus affect resulting liquidity provision, progressivity, and labor supply incentives.

On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News. The interviews with FBI agents are part of the Justice Department's effort to fulfill a promise an assistant attorney general made to Congress last month to examine whether a special counsel was warranted to look into what has become known as the Uranium One deal, a senior Justice Department official said....

Two Chicago universities will advance to the next round of competition to build the Barack Obama presidential library and museum, the president’s foundation announced on Monday.. The University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago will join Columbia University in New York and the University of Hawaii in submitting official proposals to host the library. The semifinalists were chosen from a field of 13 potential bidders that hoped to host the library. In Chicago, the remaining potential sites are on the South Side and the West Side.

With thousands of Californians still waiting for unemployment checks because of a computer problem that has delayed payments for weeks, the Brown administration on Tuesday ordered the Employment Development Department to begin paying backlogged claims for continued benefits before determining if they are eligible for payment.

“One omission by one state–you wouldn’t think it would be a big deal, but in this case it drove the number down by 10%,” said analyst Stephen Stanley with Pierpont Securities. Economists are speculating the state could be California, the most populous state in the nation. “It was likely a state with a large population and we suspect that it was California based on the occasional massive swings that have occurred in its claims data in the past,” said Daniel Silver, an economist with JPMorgan, in a note. “In short, this reading is worthless in terms of informing on the...

Unemployment rates rose in a majority of states in August for a third straight month, further evidence that the depressed job market is widespread. The Labor Department said Friday that unemployment rates increased in 26 states. They fell in 12 and remained unchanged in 12. Nationwide, the economy added no new net jobs in August, and the unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent for the second straight month. Many employers pulled back on hiring after the economy barely grew in the first half of the year. The economy added an average of just 39,500 jobs per month from May through...

"I understand why extending unemployment insurance provides relief to people who need it, but how does that create jobs," Wall Street Journal's Laura Meckler asked Jay Carney at Wednesday's WH briefing. Carney responded: "Oh, uh, it is by, uh, I would expect a reporter from the Wall Street Journal would know this as part of the entrance exam." "There are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance," Carney said. Carney answers the question: "It is one of the most direct ways to infuse money directly into the economy because people who are...

WASHINGTON - A "new normal" is emerging for the U.S. jobs market, and a growing number of economists warn that it's likely to mean that unemployment will remain persistently high, at 7 percent or more, for years to come. The 9.1 percent unemployment rate reported in May remains high by post-World War II standards long after the economy resumed growth following the worst recession in 70 years. It's prompting economists to rethink basic assumptions about the U.S. labor market.

The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits rose last week, signaling the roller coaster ride for the job market has not yet come to an end. There were 454,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Jan. 22, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was up 51,000 from the 403,000 claims filed the week before, and much worse than the 410,000 claims economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected. "This is definitely a setback," said T.C. Robillard, a senior research analyst who covers several large staffing firms for Signal Hill Capital. Jobless claims often bounce around from week...

One piece of career advice has been ingrained in all of us: never quit a job without another opportunity lined up. It is much harder to get a new job when you don't already have one. In the crummiest economy ever, this advice is losing its luster. More and more people seem to be saying, "To hell with work. To hell with being unhappy. I'll quit and find something I like better." Business Insider created a survey to see if this was a real trend -- and it is. After surveying 225 people, here are the major findings: 93% quit...

The federal agency that tracks unemployment is changing its methods in an effort to more accurately gauge the severity of the nation's jobless woes. Citing "an unprecedented rise" in long-term unemployment, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced it is changing its upper-limit for tracking long-term unemployment from two years to five. Beginning next month, BLS will send out modified forms that will allow people surveyed to mark if they have been without jobs for "260 weeks or over." Previously, the form had only asked if jobless stints had lasted "99 weeks or over." Increasing the reportable limit...

The 111th Congress is now history, and Minnesota will not soon forget it. Following the bruising "lame-duck" session, Democrats came home bragging of extending health coverage to 519,000 uninsured Minnesotans and extending jobless benefits for as many as 103,032 people at risk of losing benefits in the coming year.

The unemployment rate rose in 21 states and Washington D.C. in November, up from the 14 states that showed increases the month before, according to government data released Friday. Fifteen states did report decreases in jobless rates in November, while 14 states remained unchanged. Nevada continues to have the highest rate in the country, creeping up to 14.3 percent in November from 14.2 percent in the previous month. The Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation said in a statement that the rate is stabilizing. "The stabilizing unemployment rate indicates that the worst of the recession is over,” said Bill...

snip ------------------------------------------------------ In exchange, extended unemployment benefits between 26 and 99 weeks will be continued for 13 months, to the end of December 2011 (costing around $65 billion).

I am confused. MSNBC just announced that the 13 month extension is for existing unemployment recipients. In other words the 99'ers will get 13 months additional unemployment. Yet others on this web site state the extension only allows 13 more months of possible 99 week unemployment. Can somebody clarify this? Do we have 13 more months of 99 week unemployment or is unemployment now possible for up to 151 weeks? Thank you

The White House on Thursday urged Congress to extend jobless aid for unemployed Americans and warned that failure to act could inflict a heavy toll on the U.S. economy. "Without extended benefits, the country would have had 800,000 fewer jobs as of September 2010, and failure to act to extend benefits again could cost the nation 600,000 jobs by the end of next year," according to a new report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Delta Air Lines is having what might possibly be the most-popular job search in a long time But getting there isn't so enjoyable. First trainees have to sit through a flight simulator where the airplane cabin shakes, rattles and feels like it is falling from the sky. You can feel your stomach in your throat. Then alarms go off, smoke fills the cabin and a computerized voice tells everybody to evacuate. There are also informal training sessions on such things as how to find housing. Most flight attendants either commute to their base airport or spend a few nights in...

A federal grand jury in Davenport is investigating a nationally publicized, animal-rights-related break-in at a University of Iowa lab in 2004, according to a 20-year-old woman from Minneapolis who says she is a possible target of the inquiry. Carrie Feldman refused to testify when she was subpoenaed to testify at the federal courthouse on Oct. 15, she said. She will refuse again at a second ordered appearance on Nov. 17, she said. Ultimately, she could be held in contempt of court and taken into custody. At least four masked people released hundreds of animals and caused hundreds of thousands of...

Miss January -- wearing only a G-string thong -- says she likes tattoos and Harley Davidsons. Miss July -- appearing in pink lingerie and a lab coat -- says she likes going to the beach but also the book Anna Karenina. Miss February likes taking naps, live music -- and "fun science demos." Like a Playboy pinup collection, this 2007 calendar features a dozen scantily clad models. But these students at the University of Illinois aren't your typical models. The women in the "Girls of Engineering" calendar were accepted to the Downstate campus' nationally ranked engineering program, where students on...