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http://www.cbpp.org/2-25-04ui-pr.htm760,000 JOBLESS DENIED AID — AND COUNTING
Large Numbers of Unemployed Go Without Aid As Administration Remains Silent on Whether to Restart Federal Assistance Program
Because the federal unemployment program was not extended, by the end of February an estimated 760,000 workers will exhaust unemployment benefits and not receive federal aid.
350,000 workers exhausted their regular benefits in January and received no further federal assistance, a record for a single month.
The Administration has repeatedly refused to take a position on whether the federal unemployment program should resume.
From late December, when the federal program designed to help the long-term unemployed began phasing out, through the end of February, an estimated 760,000 jobless workers will have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits without receiving additional aid, according to new projections by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This suggests both that the job market continues to be soft and that the federal unemployment program should be restarted.
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The 760,000 figure is based on previously released data for December, just-released data for January, and a Center estimate for February. New Labor Department data for January show that about 350,000 individuals exhausted their regular unemployment benefits last month and received no further unemployment assistance. In no other month on record, with data available back to 1971, have there been so many “exhaustees." (The attached table provides state-by-state data on the number of exhaustees in January.)
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Further, if the existence of federal unemployment benefits had been the main reason the unemployed were not finding jobs, the number of workers exhausting their regular unemployment benefits should not have been exceptionally large in January, since the federal program was no longer open to these workers. In fact, exhaustions hit a record high level in January.<snip>
The report estimated that nearly two million unemployed workers will exhaust their regular benefits from January to June 2004 and go without further aid. <snip>
Source: U.S. Department of Labor.