Unemployment: When Not Working At All Beats Working A Little

[stopbush]

Is any work better than no work? Not for unemployment benefits.
The Christian Science Monitor
By Ron Scherer – Mon Mar 29, 6:28 pm ET

New York – Roberta Hanson of North Haven, Conn., had been searching for work for 22 months when she landed a part-time job weekend afternoons and nights for a nearby municipal parks and recreation department. But now Ms. Hanson rues the day she took that work. Why? The Connecticut Department of Labor used her negligible earnings in her part-time job as the new baseline for Hanson's unemployment benefits. She went from receiving $483 a week to getting nothing.

"Afterwards, unofficially, they said I shouldn’t have taken the job," Hanson says.

It's a twist in the law that may affect thousands of other workers, given that the ranks of the long-term unemployed are now so high. Many people who have been out of work for a year are picking up work as temps or part-timers, unaware that state agencies will recalculate their unemployment benefits after a year – and use their most recent work history and pay level to do it.

"What is going on for these workers is that because their most recent wages are much lower than the wages they earned in their prior full-time job, they are facing substantial cuts in their weekly unemployment benefits," says George Wentworth, a consultant at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in New York.


Most of the people caught in this snag are on Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), a federal program to help those who have exhausted their state benefits. However, after workers have been jobless for 52 weeks, states are required to check to see if a worker has requalified for state benefits. If someone is eligible for state benefits – no matter how small – federal law requires that he or she stop collecting EUC and go back onto state benefits. The states, many with unemployment pools that are borrowing from the federal government, are dramatically reducing the amount paid out to individuals.

(snip)

The potential reduction in benefits for parttimers and temps comes as temp services are starting to hire more workers because businesses don’t want to add fulltimers until they're sure the economic recovery is permanent. In February, temporary help services added 48,000 jobs, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Since September, jobs at temp services have risen by 284,000.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100329/ts_csm/291284

[prolesunited]

1. Not to mention that in most states

if you are at the highest tier, you are making more on UE than at a minimum wage job.

[stopbush]

2. Yep. I'm currently on UI in CA and receive $475 a week.

Minimum wage in CA is $8 an hour, or $320 a week BEFORE taxes.

[Subdivisions]

4. That certainly is true in my case. As a union construction tradesman,

when I am laid off I get the maximum state benefits, which was ~$476 per week. That is equivalent to a $10+/hr job working 40 hours per week.

[Nay]

6. Sonny Nay, a union electrician, was in the same boat. He really can only

take union jobs, or he's screwed. He's been doing okay (after moving back in with us) and has recently gone back to work, but he knows better than to take a crappy low wage job. Never mind the fact that he would also lose his union health care insurance if he took one of those crummy jobs!

[unblock]

3. effective marginal tax rates over 100% for the poor are fine as long as the rich only pay 33%

at least that's when i learnt from shrub.

:eyes:

[A-Long-Little-Doggie]

5. And this is why the Census cannot hire enough people

even with high unemployment. If I took one of the 3-month census jobs, and then went back on UI, my benefit would be cut by over 50%.

[tonysam]

7. You're actually supposed to take regular full-time work, not temp or part-time work.

By the way, getting more from UI than working is only true if you received the MAXIMUM possible and if you apply for very low wage jobs.

[tech9413]

8. Unfortunately, Clinton really screwed the pooch

When he gloated that we have changed the unemployment system as we know it. I never got the opportunity to collect UI in my 56 y/o lifetime, even though I should have in the 70's (screwed by employers that paid salaries in cash, especially prevalent on the East Coast urban areas). They pocketed the contributions for UI and Workers Comp and as a young kid or low information citizen you didn't know you were being cheated.
Now I look at my SSI payout statements and just wonder how much more it would be if my employers played by the rules.

Rule #1: Don't trust anyone that that won't sign a notarized contract. Anyone, even your family will screw you if it means financial gain for them and they can explain away you as a screw up.

Rule #2: Don't accept cash payment for any work you do unless you know the people or can screw them if they screw you. Take the money up front, at least half of it. They might screw you but only half as bad as they would have.

When I could have collected UI to tide me and my ex until we could get things back in gear was probably much more than a few months of UI would have offered to set up a substantial business.

Rule #3 We ARE our brothers keepers! In one way or another, we pay for the conditions of the rest of the world. We have a choice to pay up front and contain the cost or say it doesn't matter and see costs treble in next year or so.

As the Bioneers say "We are all connected". Makes no difference which side you're on. What we do affects them and what they do affects us.

[stopbush]

9. When did Clinton say that the unemployment system has been changed?

I remember him saying he was ending welfare as we know it, not specifically unemployment. Citation please.