More than a million jobless Americans rely on extended unemployment benefits to help pay their bills and survive financially. That may soon change, though, as the benefits are running out.
The National Employment Law Project (NELP) has estimated that "
540,000 Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits by the end of September [PDF], and a whopping 1.5 million will run out of coverage by the end of the year."
Depending on a state's unemployment rate, 100 percent federally funded extended benefits can last from 20 to 53 weeks. Currently, 2.8 million unemployed workers receive such benefits. In some states, the NELP reported, the situation is growing especially dire:
"Thirty-one states now have three-month average unemployment rates over 8 percent, affecting over 400,000 jobless workers who will be cut off unemployment by the end of September. Benefits are running out the soonest in these high unemployment states because they triggered on to the full packages of unemployment benefit provisions the quickest.
"Thirteen states and the District of Columbia now have three-month average unemployment rates over 10 percent, with an estimated 230,000 workers facing exhaustion by September. Some of the nation's most populous states -- like California and Florida -- are the hardest hit. But while severe unemployment and benefit exhaustions are significantly impacting southern states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina) and the Midwest (Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana), the exhaustions are hitting the nation from the West coast (Nevada, Oregon, California) to the East (Rhode Island)."
The New York Times provided additional background on the seriousness of the situation:
"Calls are rising for Congress to pass yet another extension this fall, possibly adding 13 more weeks of coverage in states with especially high unemployment. As of June,
the national unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, reaching 15.2 percent in Michigan. Even if the recession begins to ease, economists say, jobs will remain scarce for some time to come.
"If more help is not on the way, by September a huge wave of workers will start running out of their critical extended benefits, and many will have nothing left to get by on even as work keeps getting harder to find,' said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director of the employment law project.
"For many desperate job seekers, any extension will seem a blessing. Pamela C. Lampley of Dillon, S.C., said she sat outside the post office last month and cried because 'it was the first Wednesday in quite some time that I've gone to the mailbox and left without an unemployment check.' The jobless rate in her state is 12.1 percent."
