PERMANENT UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS ARE THE NEWEST ENTITLEMENT; NOBODY HAS THE GUTS TO STOP THEM!

Millions of Americans have been forced to rely on unemployment payments for extended periods as the nation struggles through its longest period of high joblessness in a generation, and critics are taking aim, saying that the Depression-era program created as a temporary bridge for laid-off workers is turning into an expensive entitlement.

For many workers, these benefits are a reason NOT to find work, and the job searching affidavits that qualify one for another weekly check, are a sham, with unemployed simply listing postings from ads, and the government rarely if ever checking their authenticity.

About 11.4 million out-of-work people now collect unemployment compensation, at a cost of $10 billion a month. Half of them have been receiving payments for more than six months, the usual insurance limit. But under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates -- the longest period since the program's inception.

The unemployed say extensions help to tide them over in unusually difficult times when jobs are hard to come by. Although unemployment held steady at 9.7 percent in February, millions of jobs have been lost in the downturn, particularly in the hardest-hit sectors including real estate, construction, manufacturing and financial services. Those jobs are unlikely to return even when the economy recovers, many experts say.

But complaints that extending unemployment payments discourages job-seeking have begun to bubble into the political debate. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) recently single-handedly held up the latest extension, a bill to keep unemployment benefits in place for 30 more days, saying Congress should find other cuts to cover its $10 billion price tag.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) did not join Bunning's effort, but he defended his colleague's point of view. Kyl told the Senate he questioned why anyone would see unemployment benefits as helpful to the economy, or to the job market.

"If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said. "I am sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue it is a job enhancer."

Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Center, says there's a good reason people are out of work for so long. There are six unemployed Americans for every available job, he said.

"The primary reason people are out of work so long is a lack of jobs," Stettner said.

The 14.9 million jobless Americans have been out of work an average of 29.7 weeks, just below January's 30.2-week average. Those levels are the highest since the government began keeping those records in the 1950s, according to Stettner.

The ranks of the unemployed include Jerome Boyd, 48, a father of four who lives in Arlington. He was laid off in August from his job as a sous chef at Gaylord National Hotel at National Harbor.

He receives $1,200 a month in unemployment benefits, less than half the $3,000 a month he brought home from his job. Now he is often behind paying about $1,500 in rent, a car payment and other expenses. "I'm stealing from Peter to pay Paul," he said, adding: "There's the cable, the phone bill. I owe the bank overdraft fees and the insurance is lapsing a little bit. I can't take my kids shopping for school clothes because I don't have enough to do that."

The checks may be meager, but Boyd does not know what he would do without them. "I depend on this money," he said. "I'm wondering every other week if it is going to keep coming in or not. It's stressful, and especially when you're trying to look for a job, too."

States determine the amount of the benefits, but they average 36 percent of the average weekly wage, according to the National Employment Law Center. Recipients must look for work. Boyd said he has applied for 20 jobs in the past four months but has gotten only a few calls back. He has, however, looked only for jobs that pay above the minimum wage.

"I can't take something that's minimum wage because I just won't be able to pay my bills," he said. "I'd have to work three jobs to pay the bills, and that doesn't make sense."

Unemployment benefits were created as part of the Social Security Act of 1935, intended to provide the unemployed some portion of their income while helping the economy weather down times. Nearly two-thirds of the jobless collect unemployment benefits, which go only to those who have earned a certain amount of money in the previous year, and who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Unemployment compensation is funded largely through employer taxes (a few states require worker contributions). They have been extended in previous periods of unusually high unemployment, then rolled back when the rate declined.

Although the availability of long-term unemployment benefits "could dampen people's efforts to look for work," the Congressional Budget Office said in a February report, that concern "is less of a factor when employment opportunities are expected to be limited for some time."

The report went on to say that people receiving unemployment benefits tend to plow the money right back into the economy, making them "both timely and cost-effective in spurring economic activity and employment."

Today, the unemployed confront a changing workplace. The Obama administration has tried to address that by investing heavily in education, clean energy and scientific research, which officials say will create the jobs of the future. But that takes time, and jobs are being lost faster than new kinds can be created. That places unprecedented pressure on a program created to provide short-term relief while people waited for jobs to return.

"It is appropriate and natural for Congress to extend the time limit of unemployment insurance with the job market as bad as it is," said James Sherk, a labor economist at the Heritage Foundation. "But by quadrupling it, it is no longer an unemployment insurance program but a welfare program."

Phillip L. Swagel, a former Treasury Department official who is now a business professor at Georgetown University, said that some people might take longer to find a new job as a result of unemployment insurance extensions, but that right now it's a needed benefit.

"The reality is that it's hard to find a job even for people who really want one," he said.

But as the job market improves, Swagel said, unemployment insurance extensions must be pared back quickly, as they have been in previous downturns. "It's important to let the extensions lapse as the job market recovers -- to avoid having disincentives to work once the job market is better," Swagel said.

Jeffrey Carlson of Grand Rapids, Mich., a former insurance salesman and father of six, says he is motivated to find work, despite the $1,650 a month he collects in unemployment benefits. That money does not go far given his rent, child support, utilities and credit card bills. Carlson, 44, said he has applied for numerous jobs with no luck and has spent $40,000 in savings.

Carlson, who made $50,000 a year before he was laid off, said watching Bunning and other senators debate whether to extend unemployment benefits was painful and infuriating.

"I paid into the system for 25 years and now I need it," he said. "People are being put through the emotional heartache and anxiety of not knowing if it's going to keep coming. There are too many people who need it and are depending on it."

HELLO MR. CARLSON, THAT IS TOTALLY FALSE. YOU HAVE NEVER PAID ONE SINGLE PENNY INTO "IT" AS YOU CLAIM, SINCE UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE PAYMENTS ARE SOLELY PAID BY THE EMPLOYER, NOT YOU! Articles like this always are written by novices who do no fact checking and create totally false impressions.

Another $10 billion a month, handed out, forever????/

FOOLS RUSH IN TO EMBRACE 10% UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AS "SIGN" OF AN ECONOMIC IMPROVEMENT-NOT!

Wow, national unemployment is now only 10%...or 17.2% real unemployment! This is good news?

Contrary to the top line reporting, taking a real analysis in reading the reports, the job losses continue in the highest paying jobs like manufacturing and construction! They are growing, not falling, contrary to the fortune tellers who see some type of magical economic turnaround.

To use my company as an example, we routinely add 15-20 employees during November and through the end of December to help during the busy season...after these two months we do not need them anymore. This year, we actually hied for these $10 an hour jobs with no other benefits 10 of the people who are laid off from MANAGEMENT POSITIONS!

In the past we hired housewives, now we got people with management degrees and experience. We will be offering them an opportunity to stay on in a fully commission position if they want to continue in January.

This is why the unemployment went down in November. It will spike up in january and onwards.

In the state I am located in, it remains very high due to unions controlling many of the factories in the area, I am non-union and thus am actually still profitable.

If under the new health plan I would be forced to provide health benefits, I would not hire these workers.

JOB PICTURE IMPROVING-NOT! UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS EXTENDED AGAIN AND AGAIN AS PEOPLE CLAIM NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND WORK AFTER A YEAR!

Ok, you lost your job and applied to unemployment benefits to help with the temporary set back, but...that was 52 weeks ago! Get real what is the job you are seeking to get?

It is higher paying than the last one, are your expectations too high? Probably you are expecting to find a better position paying more money, when that is exactly the type of job that is NOT now available.

People who search for a new job to be better than the old one, the one they lost or were displaced from, are in for a reality check. The new job can be considered temporary, while still searching, and it is unlikely that a better position is what one should be looking for is a recession...a quick fix is better than NO fix.

I knew people who used the unemployment checks as "vacation time" checks and made up the searches for the jobs to just simply get the money, and when the money ran out they got a job....if the benefits rum longer, they stay unemployed longer.

What incentive is there to get a job if they are happy with the checks?

Now congress will make those checks last longer...to prolong the job search for many who just are not looking anyway as long as the checks keep coming.

Despite predictions the Great Recession is running out of steam, the House is taking up emergency legislation this week to help the millions of Americans who see no immediate end to their economic miseries.

A bill offered by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., and expected to pass easily would provide 13 weeks of extended unemployment benefits for more than 300,000 jobless people who live in states with unemployment rates of at least 8.5 percent and who are scheduled to run out of benefits by the end of September.

The 13-week extension would supplement the 26 weeks of benefits most states offer and the federally funded extensions of up to 53 weeks that Congress approved in legislation last year and in the stimulus bill enacted last February.

People from North Carolina to California "have been calling my office to tell me they still cannot find work a year or more after becoming unemployed, and they need some additional help to keep their heads above water," McDermott said.

Critics of unemployment insurance argue that it can be a disincentive to looking for work, and that extending benefits at a time the economy is showing signs of recovery could be counterproductive.

But this recession has been particularly pernicious to the job market, others say.

Some 5 million people, about one-third of those on the unemployment list, have been without a job for six months or more, a record since data started being recorded in 1948, according to the research and advocacy group National Employment Law Project.

"It smashes any other figure we have ever seen. It is an unthinkable number," said Andrew Stettner, NELP's deputy director. He said there are currently about six jobless people for every job opening, so it's unlikely people are purposefully living off unemployment insurance while waiting for something better to come along.

The current state unemployment check is about $300 a week, supplemented by $25 included in the stimulus act.

That doesn't go very far when a loaf of bread can cost $2.79 and a gallon of milk $2.72, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said at a hearing last week on the unemployment insurance issue.

"We need to keep our unemployed neighbors from falling into poverty. We need to figure out how best to make our safety net work," Baucus said.

The jobless rate currently stands at 9.7 percent and is likely to hover above 10 percent for much of 2010. Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said at the Finance Committee hearing that, according to Labor Department figures, 51 percent of unemployment insurance claimants exhausted their regular benefits in July, the highest rate ever.

"It is likely the exhaustion rate will continue to increase in coming months" as the unemployment rate continues to rise, he said.

Stettner predicted that Congress will likely have to continue extending jobless benefits through 2011.

McDermott in July introduced a more ambitious bill that would have extended through 2010 the compensation programs included in the stimulus act. Those benefits are now scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

But with a price tag of up to $70 billion, that bill would have been far more difficult to pass. McDermott instead decided to offer the scaled-down 13-week extension to meet the urgent needs of those seeing their benefits disappear this year.

McDermott said his bill would not add to the deficit because it would extend for a year a federal unemployment tax of $14 per employee per year that employers have been paying for more than 30 years. It would also require better reporting on newly hired employees to reduce unemployment insurance overpayments.

Three-fourths of the 400,000 workers projected to exhaust their benefits this month live in high unemployment states that would qualify for the additional 13 weeks of benefits under his bill, McDermott said.

They include Alabama, Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

Other states could qualify for more benefits if their unemployment rates are approaching the 8.5 percent threshold.

"REAL UNEMPLOYMENT" IS 16% IF THE GOVERNMENT COUNTED ACCURATELY PEOPLE WHO STOPPED LOOKING-WILL THEY EVER?

It always amazes me how the government wants us to believe their figures on statistical information such as unemployment data, yet there is no government program that we can ever say is run well or accurate.

The only numbers that are counted relate to actual people filing claims for unemployment insurance payments! But, how many do not file for various reasons including the stigma of filing? Lot's do not.

In actuality about 16 million "working" people are not working or are seriously underemployed in the USA. This means that they do not spend as much at stores, restaurants, or with shops and boutiques which depend on their spending to keep them in business.

It's hard to predict that there is any tangible reason for unemployment to magically decrease, and nothing is being done in any meaningful way by ANY government-state or federal to help the businesses which will drive the economy.

For instance, a liquor store owner just told me that a new excise tax on the alcohol content of wines and spirits will add as much as 30% or possibly more to the retail price of a bottle of wine or spirits at the lowest price point! They have resorted to posting large signs in their store to inform the consumer that they are not responsible for raising the price...it is the new tax at the distributor level!

However, the government wants to hide that fact so by taxing at the distributor level, the retail price is simply higher, leaving the consumer to believe that it is those greedy retailers raising the price. Additionally, as the item is rung up at the cash register, the initial higher shelf price, the price with the hidden tax on it, is ow taxed at a higher amount as well.

This amounts to a tax on a tax!

Back to unemployment, it should be noted that it is a bad idea to add a tax on liquor when unemployment is very high, don't you agree?

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

Watch for this guy's term expiring without being re-appointed!

He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policy-setting body of the central bank.

Lockhart pointed out in a speech to a chamber of commerce in Chattanooga, Tennessee that those two categories of people are not taken into account in the Labor Department's monthly report on the unemployment rate. The official July jobless rate was 9.4 percent.

Lockhart, who heads the Atlanta, Georgia, division of the Fed, is the first central bank official to acknowledge the depth of unemployment amid the worst US recession since the Great Depression.

Lockhart said the US economy was improving ( he has got to be nuts to make this statement since his area has lost the most manufacturing jobs) but "still fragile," and the beginning stages of a sluggish recovery were underway.

"My forecast for a slow recovery implies a protracted period of high unemployment," he said, adding that it would be difficult to stimulate jobs through additional public spending.

You could not be more wrong Mr. Lockhart. Public spending does not create jobs, it sucks the money out of those who earn it and redistributes it! How do people like him have these positions when they do not understand basic economics?

The government never creates jobs, it destroys jobs! It taxes businesses and successful individuals and either takes their money directly or indirectly and then redistributes it or simply wastes it.

President Barack Obama's administration has resisted calls for more public spending, arguing that the 787-billion-dollar stimulus passed in February needs time to work its way through the economy.

Please explain to me how re-paving a road someplace on a rural highway (as most recently documented in various TV programs is going to help employ a person in the low income section of Detroit?

Lockhart noted that construction and manufacturing had been particularly hard hit in the recession that began in December 2007 and predicted some jobs were gone for good. No kidding...these are not jobs which "come back" either. When a business closes, it closes for good. Closed businesses do not reopen, especially manufacturing businesses in competitive industries.

Prior to the recession, he said, construction and manufacturing combined accounted for slightly more than 15 percent of employment. But during the recession, their job losses made up more than 40 percent of all US job losses.

"In my view, it is unlikely that we will see a return of jobs lost in certain sectors, such as manufacturing," he said.

He is so correct!

"In a similar vein, the recession has been so deep in construction that a reallocation of workers is likely to happen -- even if not permanent."

"Reallocation" of workers means that a well paid painter has to find a job as a WAL-MART or HOME DEPOT paint department clerk for instance, since his job is gone due to a lack of demand for his services. That demand may not come back before he is permanentley displaced from that prior occupation.

Payroll employment has fallen by 6.7 million since the recession began. That also does not take into account those people who are NOT reported and those counted amoung the 20 million illegals in this country who may now work less or be paid less and are NEVER counted.

GOOD NEWS, ONLY 630,000 PEOPLE FILED FOR UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS LAST WEEK!

Finally, good news. We needed some good news.

The government reported that the predicted 670,000 new claims for unemployment were lower than expected last week; instead of 670,000 claims that were predicted, only 630,000 new claims were filed.

Yeah!!!!!!! Finally something to cheer about, or is it?

There were some of the usual "asterisks" attached to the numbers. It is important to first notice that there is an asterisk attached to a number...that means the number may be not as represented...that a condition exists which may render it meaningless, or worse.

In the case of these numbers reported, the asterisk explained that the numbers may have been lower than expected due to a holiday...so less people could file claims.

Then the numbers were further asterisked by words that confused the average person.

Then at the end of the report, the report added that the actual total number of people receiving unemployment benefits could be higher than reported by 1.2 MILLION people, since they are receiving EXTENDED benefits that are not part of the report.

Come on...what is the total number ?

Just give us a number without the asterisks!

The bottom line is that we can expect about 600,000 to 700,000 new unemployed people every week! They will not be the beneficiaries of the $13 weekly tax witholding deduction decrease.

Various pundits and experts are projecting that this year the unemployment rate could get to 8%, even 9% by year end. They must have found an old bong in the basement from their college days.

Are they kidding? How about that rate being reached in the next few months, and then a worsening of the entire cycle ?

These figures are for only those people still being counted as unemployed since they are actually receiving benefits...what about those who are not receiving benefits, or never did but are unemployed?

For instance, someone with a part time job, or two, and he/she loses that job? Not counted.

How about the commission sales person, getting a significant reduction in commissions? Not counted either.

See what I mean? What is the true number ?

The number one politically correct state...California is now over 10% unemployed and going higher.

The government further reported that the "true" number of unemployed at 12.5 million people and that another 8.6 million people were "part time and discouraged", whatever that means. I guess it is another of those asterisks that are never clearly explained or defined.

If these results were factored in, the true unemployment would have been at 14.8%, a record high over the last few decades.

At the current rates of job loss, and calculating the effects of the "stimulus" job killers, and the "Union job creation stimulus bill", let's guess at 15% REAL unemployment by year end as a MINIMUM!

Disaster for the economy, yes, boom for government jobs which are expected to grow by 600,000 during that same time; start applying for those jobs NOW!

Now let's make a Dow Jones Average prediction by year end.

We previously thought 5,500-6,000...now revising that downwards...5,000 or less, due to the specific job killing actions planned by the government, and others yet to come.

So far, the market has lost $12 TRILLION dollars in the last 12 months.

It will lose another $3 TRILLION in the rest of the year, based on the plans by the government as they relate to job non-creation.