A bill to create a Tier 5 of federal unemployment benefits to help those who are languishing in long-term unemployment will be submitted in Congress sometime next week. The bill would add an additional 14 weeks to available unemployment benefits.
Gallup has a webpage that tracks global unemployment numbers. Felix Salmon looks at the data and provides another argument for why the claim that unemployment benefits keeps people from taking jobs is false.
Annie Lowrey, our former colleague at the Washington Independent, is now writing for Slate — and is still doing the brilliant job she did for our network of telling the story of the 99ers, those who have been unemployed so long that they have exhausted their unemployment benefits.
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Today, Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) took to the Senate floor to argue for the Americans Want to Work Act, a bill extending the maximum number of weeks of unemployment insurance benefits to 119. The legislation also extends the HIRE Act payroll tax exemption and More…
In response to last month’s Glenn Beck-hosted “Restoring Honor” summit, hundreds of thousands plan to descend on Washington for a rally by the Lincoln Memorial next weekend. On Saturday, liberal groups are hosting the “One Nation Working Together” event, making a case for activism for progressive legislation to a More…
For a few months, I’ve been following the efforts of the unemployed — specifically the long-term unemployed, and especially the 99ers, who have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits — to unionize online. The idea is that the 6.6 million Americans who have More…
Via Felix Salmon, Reuters writer James B. Kelleher has a great, long-form story on unemployed industrial workers and the fate of manufacturing in Michigan. He profiles Scott Stevenson, a blue-collar worker who feels his generation is living more poorly than his parents’. He has been unemployed for years. He More…
He hit “publish” on the last Wednesday in July, in the middle of a long afternoon. “I also have become homeless and am on the verge of suicide. I slept out in the wood last night and didn’t gett very much sleep. I hate to bring you people down with More…
After 99 weeks, or more, of unemployment, traveling to a political rally is a luxury. Across the country, thousands of 99ers, Americans who have exhausted the maximum weeks of unemployment benefits, have written letters or called Congress advocating for legislation extending benefits or creating jobs programs. But the first 99ers More…
Today, returned from the six-week August recess to vote on the state aid bill, House Democrats put forward legislation to create a fifth tier of unemployment benefits. Last week, Senate Democrats put forward similar legislation. Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) cosponsored the legislation creating a fifth More…
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