The Long-Term Unemployment Trap Could Get Worse

[octoberlib]

The emergency support program for the long-term unemployed which was first enacted in 2008 could face big cuts with the start of the New Year, even though the recovery remains tepid and unemployment figures remain higher than at this point in any previous recession. And many experts are saying that further austerity would bring more bad news for the economy.

Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities — a think tank focused on policies to help low- and moderate-income Americans — writes, the “mainstream explanation for why unemployment is so high is that businesses still don’t have enough sales to justify hiring enough workers to restore normal levels of employment.” Failing to renew the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program, which has been extended a number of times since 2008 to help those struggling during the Great Recession, will have the opposite effect of what is needed — Americans out-of-work for long periods will have even less to spend, which will further blunt the already-pretty-blunt recovery.

“With an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent, we need to raise the emergency unemployment insurance (UI) and push for extensions to 2014,” Gene Sperling, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said at a public forum last week. Sperling claimed he “sees a good chance to get a new reform through Congress,” the MNI financial news service reported.

But right now, House Republicans have not shown much interest in coming to an agreement to extend the program. “The current EUC program already has served up about 10 times as many weeks of federal extended benefits as the most recent program that operated in the wake of the 2001 recession and terror attacks, and nearly six times as many weeks as the program that ran from 1991 through 1994,” said the House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) in a press release. “And despite Democrat claims that such spending on UI benefits is the ‘best stimulus,’ all this record-setting benefit spending has bought is the slowest recovery on record.”

http://billmoyers.com/2013/11/20/the-long-term-unemployment-trap-could-get-worse/

[ruffburr]

1. Let's face IT-

AS long as the republican house is full of baggers and Ayn Rand nut jobs and whatever Gohmert is, There will be nothing but austerity for the majority, While the lobbyists and wealthy sell/buy out the country , So don't hold your breath for a UI extension or an end to sequester funding of many, Soon all social programs will be toast, If the wingers get their way

[FarCenter]

2. Companies are automating their back office processes as fast as they can

Reis: Office Vacancy Rate declines slightly in Q3 to 16.9%
Read more at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/10/reis-office-vacancy-rate-declines.html