Labor market will lose 400,000 jobs in 2013 if UI extensions expire, by Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz. November 14, 2012
“Federally funded extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are set to expire at the end of this year. These benefits serve two very useful public purposes. Most obviously, they provide a lifeline to the long-term unemployed and their families during the deepest and longest economic downturn since the 1930s. Less understood but equally crucial, the UI benefit extensions boost spending in the economy and thereby create jobs. We find that continuing the extensions through 2013 would generate spending that would support 400,000 jobs. If this program is discontinued, the economy will lose these jobs. Is the federally funded extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits program still necessary more than three years after the recession officially ended, in June 2009? Absolutely. There are 5 million workers who have been unemployed for more than six months, which is more than four times the number of long-term unemployed in 2007, before the Great Recession began. Furthermore, 40.6 percent of unemployed workers have been unemployed for more than six months, a share more than 20 percentage points higher than the 2007 average of 17.5 percent. The labor market still faces a profound long-term unemployment crisis due to the damage inflicted by the Great Recession.”
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