WASHINGTON - Ways and Means Committee Democrats today released a report on Emergency Unemployment Compensation ahead of the pending year-end expiration of the federal program that highlights how 1.3 million Americans will immediately be cut off from unemployment insurance the week of Dec. 28 if Congress does not reauthorize the program. The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program was first authorized in 2008. It has been reauthorized on several occasions since then, most recently as part of the Jan. 1, 2013 fiscal cliff agreement, with the number of weeks of federal benefits substantially reduced over the last two years. The report includes both a state-by-state analysis of the number of people who will lose their unemployment benefits the week of Dec. 28 if the EUC program is not extended and a state-by-state analysis of the reduction in the number of weeks of federal unemployment benefits that has occurred over the last two years.
Ways and Means Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) believes it is vitally important to renew the program given that the economy is still recovering from the Great Recession, with more than a third of unemployed Americans out of work for longer than six months.
“Without prompt action by Congress, well over a million Americans will have their entire unemployment compensation immediately eliminated in the midst of the holiday season and close to another two million will lose that federal unemployment insurance over the first half of next year," said Ranking Member Sander Levin. “This will not only hurt those families, but also our entire economy, which is already suffering from the government shutdown and the arbitrary across-the-board sequester cuts."
The report can be found here. Key summary points include:
* 1.3 million will lose UI the week of Dec. 28
* Almost 1.9 million more would lose UI in the first half of 2014 as their state benefits run out
* Failure to extend UI would cost economy 310,000 jobs, according to EPI
* 37% of unemployed have been out of work for more than six months
* Economy still has 2 million fewer jobs than before Great Recession began
* Unemployment benefits (# of weeks) have dropped by more than a third in the last two years, according to CRS
* Average weekly EUC benefit has dropped $42 to $256 a week due to sequestration
