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The recession has erased 6.5 million jobs since it began in December 2007, and hundreds of thousands of people without jobs are now preparing for the next big blow: the loss of their unemployment benefits.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans will start running out of their basic unemployment benefits over the next few weeks, with more than 650,000 people losing their unemployment benefits by September. A total of 4.4 million people, or about two-thirds of the entire population of people who have filed for unemployment, are expected to see their benefits expire.
The problem: There just aren't any jobs out there. The Labor Department's report on job openings showed 2.6 million job openings on the last day of May, with a job opening rate of 1.9%. The rate is the percentage of total jobs that are open for hiring on the last business day of a given month. The higher the rate, the greater the supply of open jobs. The job opening rate peaked at about 3.4% in the middle of 2007. The May hires rate was 3%, the lowest rate since data were first tracked in December 2000.
June data will be released on August 12.
"We need to get the issue attention now, because people are running out of benefits and there's just nothing for them," Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, told CNNMoney.com. The National Employment Law Project is an advocacy group that has calculated the number of people who will exhaust their unemployment benefits.
In most states, unemployed workers get a maximum 26 weeks of state-funded benefits. Two extension programs may also be available for an additional 53 weeks of benefits, however.
More than 20,000 Pennsylvanians will run out of unemployment benefits in coming days, which is the first big group to reach the expiration worry. State lawmakers are considering legislation to tap into federal funds so they can extend benefits for seven weeks. In May, emergency legislation allowed New York to extend unemployment insurance benefits for more than 120,000 New Yorkers, including about 56,000 people whose benefits had been set to expire at the end of the month.
The Labor Department's data on continuing claims does not track people who are still unemployed after the guaranteed 26 weeks of benefits expire. Continuing claims are the number of people who request benefits after their first week.
"We will see a decline in continuing filers," Stettner said. "People are falling out of these numbers, and the pace of more recent layoffs replacing them is not as steep."
Originally posted by Kingfanpaul, Goodluck to any of you who are here that have benefits running out soon.
Originally posted by Bachfin
reply to post by ShadowMaster
This is the part i dont get. Ok so like in America you guys only get your welfare/unemployment money for a set peroid of time after you lose your job?
just asking because its not like that in Australia and EU here you just keep getting benifits untill you get a job even it that takes 10 years...
I was just researching this for the "Big Thread", apparently everyone who is to roll off unemployment is already not considered on U3 unemployment reports..
Originally posted by Hastobemoretolife
One thing that has been brought up on another thread. Is that we could actually see the "official" unemployment rate drop when in actuality it's just people coming off of unemployment.
Is it just me or do you also see a train wreck in the making? You can pretty up the numbers, but you can't pretty up the reality of the job market.
Originally posted by Hastobemoretolife
One thing that has been brought up on another thread. Is that we could actually see the "official" unemployment rate drop when in actuality it's just people coming off of unemployment.
Is it just me or do you also see a train wreck in the making? You can pretty up the numbers, but you can't pretty up the reality of the job market.