By now, unless you live on Some Other Planet, you're aware that 1.3 million Americans who have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer have lost their federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation. Actually, it's
1.33 million. A New Year's gift courtesy the U.S. Congress.
But amid all the talk of these 1.3 million, it shouldn't be forgotten that it's estimated that another 1.6 million will cross over into "long-term" unemployment in the first half of 2014.
In all but seven states that have recently chopped the duration of compensation, these 1.6 million are collecting payments through state unemployment insurance (UI). If they haven't found a job after 26 weeks, they begin collecting from the federal EUC program for as many as 47 additional weeks. How long exactly depends on how high the official unemployment rate is in their state.
Without congressional action, these 1.9 million will not receive the emergency compensation they would have gotten if the program had been extended the way the majority of Americans want it to be.
But that's not all. An estimated 1.65 million people who lose their jobs in the first half of 2014 will exhaust their regular state UI payments sometime during the second half of 2014 if they can't find a job. Thus, if EUC isn't reinstated, they will join the ranks of those who got cut off this week and who will be cut off during the next six months.
So, all in all, an estimated 4.9 million workers will lose out on EUC compensation by the end of 2014. Your neighbors, your friends, the guy down the block, maybe somebody in your house, maybe you.
Officially, that. is.
Because this 4.9 million only includes the long-term unemployed who haven't been out of work such a long time that they have despaired of looking for jobs and therefore have become invisible to the statisticians. The 4.9 million also doesn't include the people who are not eligible for unemployment compensation in the first place.
So, as the coming week's discussion of extending the EUC gets under way in Congress, and that 1.3 million number gets repeated in the media, it's important to remember that the real picture is a lot, lot worse.
It's also worth thinking about how to revamp our entire unemployment compensation program. Important as this 78-year-old New Deal reform has been, the program desperately needs revamping in such a way that we don't have these ideological fights over continuing payments in the midst of recessions. Key elements of that revamping should include a permanent, modernized Works Progress Administration that includes direct hiring, and subsidies or full funding for apprenticeships and other training.
In the short run, just getting the current EUC part of the program up and running again is going to be a major battle, especially given that the only leverage Democrats now have is the shame they have tried to engender over the holidays in Republicans who blocked renewal of EUC. Many rank-and-file Republicans can, in fact, be shamed. But the trouble with shaming elected Republicans is that most of them are immune.
