Thursday, April 15, 2010
Senate Extends Jobless Benefits
The Senate voted Thursday to push back the deadline to file for extended unemployment benefits until June 2. The measure would restore federal unemployment benefits to more than 200,000 jobless Americans who started losing them on April 5 after lawmakers let that deadline pass. Some 11.2 million Americans receive unemployment insurance, with 6 million of them collecting extended benefits. Congress must be wary of this situation, especially with 33 states out of money to fund jobless benefits.
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According to this article, Lawmakers voted to push back the deadline to file for extended unemployment benefits until June 2. To be specific, some11.2 million people now receive unemployment insurance, with 6 million of them collecting extended benefits. Although the economy is improving slowly, the unemployment rate remains stuck at 9.7% and the average duration of unemployment is 32 weeks. In this situation, 33 states are out of money to fund jobless benefits.
ReplyDeleteAlthough increasing the jobless benefits will give people who lost their job in this economic crisis more confident of the future, it will also decrease their incentives to look for new jobs. Therefore, this new policy will have both positive and negative influences to the unemployment rate.
ReplyDeleteI think that the negative impact in this situation will be stronger than the positive impact. The economy is growing slowly but unemployment is still a significant problem, perhaps the biggest. Increasing jobless benefits increases the unemployment rate as we all know and it should not be done.
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