ILO.News item.November 23,2011. While unemployment in the US remains at very high levels, the number of recipients receiving unemployment insurance benefits has dropped significantly since the beginning of 2011. As can be seen in Figure 1, the number of unemployment is still close to recession peak level (around 14 million Americans are currently officially unemployed) while the number of unemployment insurance recipients has gone down from close to 12 million in early 2010 to just about 7 million in October 2011.
The reason for this is that many of the unemployed have exhausted their benefits and are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits, the duration of which varies by state. This is reflected by the bars in Figure 1: the percentage of unemployed covered by unemployment insurance, which is now below 50%, down from almost 75% during the recession. In other words, more than half of the unemployed in the US do not receive income support from unemployment insurance.
Because of the high levels of unemployment in the past two years, Congress has issued a series of emergency extensions to unemployment insurance increasing the period during which some workers can receive unemployment benefits to 99 weeks if they file for unemployment by January 1, 2012. President Obama – in his American Jobs Act – has proposed to extend the eligibility date by one year in the hardest hit states and Congress is expected to vote on the proposal before the end of the year.
