US / The share of unemployed receiving jobless aid will drop to its lowest level

The budget deal agreed upon by House and Senate negotiators last week fails to renew the federal unemployment insurance program. Unless Congress reauthorizes the program by December 28th, 1.3 million long-term unemployed workers and their families will be abruptly cut off from federal unemployment insurance at the end of the month. Nearly two million more will reach the end of their state jobless aid by mid-2014 and have no access to additional federal support.

As documented in this brief, absent a renewal of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) pro- gram by Congress, just one in four unemployed workers (26 percent) will be receiving jobless aid as of January 2014. Not only is this the lowest share during this downturn, it is the lowest since the U.S. Depart- ment of Labor first started recording this information in 1950. This swift drop in coverage will occur amid already falling numbers of jobless workers receiving aid, and despite the fact that the labor market is still weaker than it was before the recession began in December 2007 and before Congress first authorized the EUC program in June 2008.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Issue Brief: Federal Unemployment Insurance Keeps Workers in Job Search, Families Out of Poverty