In the coming weeks and months, hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits, just when it’s never been harder to find a job.
Congress extended unemployment aid twice last year, allowing people to draw a total of up to 59 weeks of benefits. Now, as the recession drags on, a rolling wave of people who were laid off early last year will lose them.
Precise figures are hard to determine, but Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute, estimates that up to 700,000 people could exhaust their extended benefits by the second half of this year.
Some will find new jobs, but prospects will be grim: Layoffs are projected to go on, and many economists expect the jobless rate, already at 8.5 percent, to hit 10 percent by year’s end.
“It’s going to be a monstrous problem,” Vroman said.
U.S. employers shed 663,000 jobs in March, and the jobless rate now stands at its highest in a quarter-century. Since the recession began in December 2007, a net total of 5.1 million jobs have disappeared.
Those who know that their unemployment aid is about to run out are counting the days, taking on odd jobs, moving in with relatives and fretting about the future.
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Obama needs to extend all unemployment indefinately until this Drecession is over.
ReplyDeleteThat's the right thing to do.
Oh, he will do so, but it won't be the right thing to do. How are we supposed to sustain them printing another 10 billion of worthless paper to keep these people on unemployment, especially since China is getting to the point where they are going to say NO to lending us the money.
ReplyDeleteAs hard as it's going to be, the benefits must be allowed to expire. We cannot sustain this debt.
And the other reason the benefits will continue, regardless of China loaning the money or not - is that the administration WANTS these people on subsidies, partly to further the push to more subsidies like government healthcare/welfare, but mostly to control the masses.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the last two comments. I would also add that this "recession" is not going to be over anytime soon. This will be a full-scale tsunami. So a) how long do you expect to keep doling out these benefits? b) Where will they get the money to do it? and c) What are people going to be able to buy with that paltry sum anyway?
ReplyDeleteI don't want to give out free money to the masses, but I also don't want to watch people begin starving in the streets. The situation isn't as black and white as some here seem to want to portray it as.
ReplyDeleteYou would really need to weigh the possible outcomes of extending benefits to determine if it is the correct course of action. If benefits are cut will it cause more foreclosures, more people on welfare and food stamps, more homelessness, more sickness, less money being put into the economy causeing more layofffs, more anger and civil unrest? Or will it be a stop gap measure that allows for some to get new jobs, some to learn to live with less, and some to find whole new living situations? Will extending the benefits be sustainable or will it be the tipping point that cause the state and federal governments to begin defaulting thus causing the situation to be even worse? Or will save money by having people getting at least some income and not being an even larger burden on the government? Either way the road is going to be long and ugly but which will cause the least damage and allow for at least some sort of recovery in the future.
As Gerald Celente says it will be 'off with their heads, every man for himself.' Charity time will be over. If you live out of an urban area and don't have to watch people starving that would be more bearable. Most of us know our neighbors idea of storing emergency food is a half dozen cans of tuna fish.
ReplyDeleteA half dozen??? Heck, now I gotta go out and buy 4 more!
ReplyDeleteFor me the litmus test of a Barack Obama who has decided to work for the American people instead of the world banking community is when he stops outsourcing and brings American jobs back home. A job is really EVERYTHING as many are finding out for the first time, the hard way. No trade agreements we've signed with other nations, that I know of, calls for us to throw away our jobs as a part of free trade.
ReplyDeleteHe is not doing anything to bring jobs back here where they belong and one of his favorite activities in Chicago was as an advisor to companies doing outsourcing. The only jobs he's creating are in the public sector. That's not productivity, it's overhead, a bleed on the economic system that will make things all the worse. The negative aspect of the increased debt will far outweigh any benefit from the few jobs that may be created in the private sector through the stimulus.
There is a common thread in his behavior. Regardless of what he says, all his actions result in the continued loss of jobs (outsourcing bleeds as many as 3 million jobs per year) and he's moving rapidly toward a meltdown of the US dollar.
This will lead to civil unrest, martial law and then it's BIG BROTHER for good.
One sticky point is getting those damn guns out of the public's hands. That seems to be the plan I see unfolding. I guess all the talk on the web, during the campaign, about Obama the dictator wasn't just idle chatter.
Attend the tea parties on 4/15. The silent deserve what they get.
hOW DID THIS WORK OUT FOR YA?
ReplyDelete