April is the cruelest month..The Unemployment report that comes out on Thursdays - lets look at the one from last week. Count up how many are claiming regular benefits + emergency unemployment benefits (EUC) + extended benefits (EB) - you get to 9.9 million.
The peak was April 2010, at 10.4 million people.
Maybe you have heard of the "Tier 5" clamour. Right now you can get up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, thats it. Just cause Congress keeps extending the deadline does not increase 99 weeks for you, they will cut you off.
Well, so find a job already! I ran into my friend who manages a Worksource Oregon center today. She did look pretty down. So whats up? Lots and lots of unemployed construction workers, that is what they know, and there is precious little out there for them. Have many people signed up for retraining, I asked. Well, she told me, you have to be able to sustain yourself on unemployment checks to stay in training - not feasible for everyone. She did tell me there were some new job listings. Perhaps not enough for the throngs that visit her office daily. I tried to offer encouragement, well at least you are letting them know about resources, options, and are a kind voice to listen...
Tier 5 would add an additional 20 weeks of benefits to states with high unemployment. Courageous advocate Senator Stabenow from Michigan has put this legislation forward. Not exactly a career ladder, but the desparate plight of the unemployed now hopes for tiers.
In a previous life, refocusing from other previous lives (not 9 exactly, yet) in software and manufacturing project management - I kept a clipping file before I discovered blogging (which is way more fun). There was the Valentine's Day 2004 unemployment extension (in Oregon). My local economist has this clipping posted on her cube wall.
Fareed Zakaria has a weekly show on CNN called GPS (Global Public Square), almost better than cspan and that is a tough thing. He had a liberal economist on last week, Jeff Sachs from Columbia. Unlike other liberal economists that I might follow through twitter, those Nobel Prize winning ones, this Mr Sachs was saying no to more stimulus. And in fact in-stead of stimulus we should have spent federal money on Investment.
Apart from the usual left (more stimulus!) right (less deficit spending!) rhetoric that I am at the point of -completely- tuning out, this was the first sensible thing I've heard lately. Yes of course. Invest in infrastructure - clean energy. Build smart grids. Build a new Sellwood Bridge. How obvious this should be - it would create j-o-b-s.
Without new jobs or investment we are headed for another season of political stalemate this fall. The less interesting thing to do is to add yet another tier of unemployment - lets see that would bring it to 99 weeks + 20 more weeks = 119 weeks. It takes 38.7 weeks to have a baby, sooo, you could have 3.0 babies in that time while you are collecting those unemployment checks. This is not ok.
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