The federal budget crisis in Washington known as the “fiscal cliff” has an estimated 400,000 long-term jobless Californians on the edge.
A 41/2 -year-old program of emergency federal jobless assistance, which provides many of the state’s unemployed up to $450 a week in benefits, is scheduled to expire Dec. 29 — unless Congress and President Obama agree to keep it going.
Nationwide, about 2 million people face a cutoff in unemployment benefits, estimated to cost $30 billion in the coming year. An additional 1 million jobless workers are expected to lose state benefits by March.
“There’s going to be millions of us who, basically, will be out in the streets,” said Lis De Bats, 54, an Agoura Hills resident laid off in January from a job as a new-home sales manager. “I’d lose my home and everything that goes along with it. I’ve used up all my resources.”
Quiz: How much do you know about the fiscal cliff?
Although the federal budget debate has prompted worries in many sectors of the economy, including federal workers and aerospace workers in Southern California, the threat to these emergency benefits is especially nerve-racking to those with no other means of support…
Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from
via Federal budget standoff is nerve-racking for state’s long-term jobless – latimes.com.
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