From HuffPo:
Terminated workers are paying an average of $429 a month this year for individual HMO coverage, compared to $399 for the same coverage in 2009, according to a survey conducted by Aon Consulting. COBRA coverage for an entire family now costs an average of $1,251, up from $1,171 per month at this time last year. With COBRA costs on the rise and the average unemployment check totaling less than $300 a week, a growing number of jobless Americans are no longer able to afford their health insurance plans.
Families are having to choose between having health insurance or keeping a roof over their head and food on the table. A family who has a member with medical needs is between a rock and a hard place.
John Zern, executive vice president and Health & Benefits Practice director with Aon Consulting, said the costs of COBRA are rising because so many people are using the system.
In an effort to spread the misery around:
Current employees should also expect to see their plans become more expensive in the next couple of years as employers shift the costs over to them. The Aon survey found that 65 percent percent of employers plan to increase cost-sharing in 2011 for deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket maximums, and 57 percent of companies polled said they will ask employees to contribute more for the overall cost of health care next year.
Tags: COBRA, health care, unemployment
First-time payments of unemployment insurance to those filing new initial state claims topped 1.7 million in the two month period of June and July, according to data made available by the Department of Labor.
That data showed approved first payments by states to newly jobless workers were 812,222 in June and 898,968 in July, the two most recent months for which statistics were available. The two-month total is 1,711,190 first-time payments to new unemployment claimants.
Because the most recent extension of federal emergency and extended benefits would only be available to those who exhaust their state-based benefits before November 30, most of those newly jobless after June 1 will only be eligible for 26 weeks of regular state benefits — unless an additional extension is enacted.
Under current law only 12 states, plus Puerto Rico, would continue to offer an additional 13 or 20 weeks of Extended Benefits to those who become unemployed after June 1, if their 3-month average unemployment rate is at least 6.5% or 8.0% respectively. Those states are Alaska, Connecticut, Kansas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington (New Hampshire and Vermont are currently below 6.5%).
The weekly reports of initial unemployment claims and related statistics available on the DOL website do not distinguish between actual new, first-time claims and those initial claims that are filed to renew benefits following the end of temporary jobs. But the states do provide DOL with monthly data of the new, first-time claims as well as the number of approved first-time unemployment benefit payments. And it’s that data that DOL provided, in response to a request.
The nearly 900,000 first-time payments in July were 20 percent more than those in December 2007, the official start of the Great Recession, and also more than the 837,000 in October 2009, when the overall unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent.
The chart above shows first payments for new state unemployment insurance claims, as reported monthly by the states to DOL. The data is not seasonally adjusted. I chose to start with June 2007 as it came one year after the initial collapse of the housing bubble and six months prior to the official start of the recession.
First payments on new state unemployment claims closely track the trends in overall initial claims. And they tend to follow seasonally-related patterns, even during recessions. The highest peaks tend to be in January, as retail and construction in particular reduce payrolls. The smaller, interim peaks tend to be in July. First time payments tend to decline again in August. But since overall initial claims have continued to rise during this August, the two-month rise in first payments in June and July may well continue. When August data becomes available, we’ll have an update.
The author is the winner of the 2010 CREDO Mobile/Netroots Nation award for Blog Activist of the Year.
Tags: first payments, initial claims, jobless benefit extension, unemployment
If that’s the question you’ve been asking yourself, in one form or another, over the course of the past year or two, believe me you are not alone. Whenever the subject comes up people seem to respond with that instant sense of recognition and a one word accompaniment: “Right?”
By now it’s clear that a sizable consensus of all but the most wackadoodle economists think that the stimulus measures in the original Recovery Act were far too small. As the Congressional Budget Office continues to report, those stimulus measures have had a positive impact on the economy. And without them, things would have been far, far worse. But for all of the benefits of the Recovery Act — extended unemployment insurance, COBRA health subsidies, highway and rail projects, TANF low-income-family employment programs, the largest tax cut for the middle-class in history, Medicare assistance for states and education aid for the nation’s schools — it just wasn’t big and bold enough to create the millions of new jobs needed to restore full employment.
Now, with the economic impact of the original stimulus winding down, the job market, the housing market and the economy overall are worsening again. The Republican obstructionists, especially in the Senate, have succeeded to a large extent in thwarting additional measures to boost the economy. Those measures that have passed, including a partial extension of unemployment benefits and aid to states, were substantially reduced in funding and scope even as they took months off the legislative calendar. Larger jobs bills were at least temporarily abandoned. Even a small business lending bill is stalled.
Caring not a whit that their obstruction is itself a cause of deepening misery for millions and increasing economic woes for the country, Republicans are betting that a worsening economy will work to their political benefit in November.
Unemployment remains staggeringly high. For more than a year, the monthly jobs figures have reported roughly 15 million American workers unemployed. That’s more jobless workers in our country than there were in 1933, at the depths of the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, calls are mounting for additional stimulus, particularly large-scale public-funded jobs programs, amid warnings that not acting would have devastating consequences. As Paul Krugman wrote recently:
The markets aren’t demanding that we give up on job creation. On the contrary, they seem worried about the lack of action — about the fact that, as Bill Gross of the giant bond fund Pimco put it earlier this week, we’re “approaching a cul-de-sac of stimulus,” which he warns “will slow to a snail’s pace, incapable of providing sufficient job growth going forward.”
With so little additional hiring by private businesses, it is increasingly clear that the private sector needs a public jobs stimulus.
A number of renowned policy voices have been even more strident of late in demanding that major, long-past-due efforts directed at large-scale job creation become the singularly crucial focus.
Robert Reich on ‘The Jobs Emergency’:
With the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression worsening, you might expect emergency action out of Washington. But the biggest upcoming debate there is whether to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent, or for everyone, or for no one. This is like debating whether to get a mousetrap when your home is sinking in quicksand.
We need a response proportional to the crisis.
[...]
First item on the agenda: establishing a federal bank that will provide states and locales zero-interest loans, to be repaid when their unemployment rates drop to 5 percent or below.
Second item: eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20,000 of all incomes and make up the difference by subjecting all income above $250,000 to the payroll tax. (Remember, the wealthy save most of their after-tax income, lower-income Americans spend it.)
Third item: recreating the WPA to hire Americans directly. The Works Progress Administration put Americans back to work during the Depression rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure.
The jobs emergency requires no less.
And in a withering critique, titled ‘Fire and Imagination’, Bob Herbert urges the Obama administration to “re-examine what it might do to improve what is fast becoming a depressing state of affairs.”
Mr. Obama’s problem — and the nation’s — is that in the midst of the terrible economic turmoil that the country was in when he took office, he did not make full employment, meaning job creation in both the short and the long term, the nation’s absolute highest priority.
Besides responding to the nation’s greatest need, job creation would have been the one issue most likely to bolster Mr. Obama’s efforts to bring people of different political persuasions together. In the early months of 2009, with job losses soaring past a half-million a month and the country desperate for bold, creative leadership, the president had an opportunity to rally the nation behind an enormous “rebuild America” effort.
Such an effort, properly conceived, would have put millions to work overhauling the nation’s infrastructure, rebuilding our ports and transportation facilities to 21st-century standards, establishing a Manhattan Project-like quest for a brave new world of clean energy, and so on.
[...]
Think of the returns the nation reaped from its investments in the interstate highway system, the Land Grant colleges, rural electrification, the Erie and Panama canals, the transcontinental railroad, the technology that led to the Internet, the Apollo program, the G.I. bill.
The problem with the U.S. economy today, as it was during the Great Depression, is the absence of sufficient demand for goods and services. Consumers, struggling with sky-high unemployment and staggering debt loads, are tapped out. The economy cannot be made healthy again, and there is no chance of doing anything substantial about budget deficits, as long as so many millions of people are left with essentially no purchasing power. Jobs are the only real answer.
[...]
During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt explained to the public the difference between wasteful spending and sound government investments. “You cannot borrow your way out of debt,” he said, “but you can invest your way into a sounder future.”
Now, with so much money already spent and Republicans expected to gain seats in the Congressional elections, the president finds himself with a much weaker hand, even if he were inclined to play it boldly.
Perhaps he can still. In fact, he must. The ideas needed to re-employ millions of Americans are not what’s lacking. There are plenty of effective ideas, and plenty of ways to finance them as well. What is needed is the resolve to put them forward and fight for their effective implementation. And not in two years or three years. Much sooner. Like now.
In a recent speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandson, Curtis Roosevelt, described the situation facing FDR in the late summer prior to the 1934 mid-term elections during his first term, in the context of the situation facing President Obama today. The full text makes for some fascinating reading; but for our purposes here, I’ll offer some relevant excerpts.
Needless to say, looming in the background for both Presidents were and are the mid-term elections. Both — 1934 and 2010 — were and are predicted to be resounding defeats for the Democrats.
[...]
Looming over Roosevelt’s head was the Great Depression, already entrenched for several years when he became president.
During the first year and a half of FDR’s first term, as his grandson recounts, FDR’s New Deal had largely focused on addressing the banking and financial crises. And while progress had also been made to help stabilize employment in some industries, and to improve wages and working conditions for many of those workers with jobs, vast numbers of workers remained unemployed. In 1934, what we’ve come to view as the core signature programs of the New Deal — the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Social Security and unemployment insurance — were yet to be enacted. That would come a year later, in 1935.
Curtis Roosevelt continues:
Roosevelt biographer Arthur Schlesinger Jr., described FDR’s dilemma during the few months before the 1934 mid-term elections. “Roosevelt, suddenly silent and irresolute, seemed to have lost his touch … The administration appeared to lack coherence both in policy and in strategy.” Schlesinger added, “these were hard days for the President. He knew that things were going badly … Roosevelt faced the organised business community [and] its determination to halt the New Deal …[He] faced the tumult of mass opinion, so ardently stirred by the radicals and demagogues … Overhanging was the threat of judicial action against New Deal laws and programs.”
The most influential historian of the day Charles A. Beard forecast doom for FDR in 1934. He wrote: “the disintegration of President Roosevelt’s prestige proceeded with staggering rapidity during February and March.”
FDR could not have felt his accustomed confidence, and was certainly not wearing his usual jaunty air. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes recorded in his diary that he found his old friend “distinctly dispirited. He looked tired … and he seemed to lack the fighting vigour or the buoyancy that has always characterized him.”
Reviewing the criticisms leveled against New Deal programs was apparently instructive for the president. Roosevelt listened to his advisors suggesting one or another alternative, one option against another. And then he pondered … and pondered … taking his time, much to his aides’ frustration. “He knows nothing about economics!” was the usual charge exchanged among them.
Then, suddenly, FDR brightened and seemed to know how and where he wanted to move. His staff remained perplexed, but again Schlesinger gets it right.
“The basic reason for [FDR's] inaction was that he was simply unprepared to act … [His] inscrutable processes of decision were moving all too slowly within.” Concludes Schlesinger, “He could not lead until he knew where he wanted to go.”
My grandfather’s convoluted way of decision-making-from the stomach up to the heart, and then the head-was, as usual, right on. Later, historians would call it his natural intuition, or something like that.
[...]
In their next edition, Time magazine reported: “Franklin Roosevelt’s mood suddenly changed.” His whole legislative program was in the pot and boiling …The Social Securities Bill, the Banking bill, the Utilities Bill, the Wagner Bill, the fate of the NRA … Suddenly the irritability which had marked his recent actions dropped from him. Pronounced Time: “His ‘winter peeve’ was over.”
Yes, the New Deal was rolling again. Referring to the autumn term of Congress in 1934, just at the time of the November elections, Charles A. Beard radically changed his tune from only a few months before. “Seldom, if ever, in the long history of Congress had so many striking and vital measures been spread upon the law books in a single session.”
And the results of mid-term election of November 1934?
The Democrats increased their congressional seats in both houses, increased their governorships, and chalked up a higher proportion of the popular vote. So much for the pundits!
The Democrats’ recovery, I think, continued to be dependent upon Franklin Roosevelt’s very personal style. He seemed to sense his way through the political maze. Whatever, it remains an exceptional example of political leadership.
What FDR did in the late summer of 1934, was talk straight with and directly to the American people, fighting for expanded public job-creation programs on a scale to re-employ millions of unemployed American workers.
In his famous Fireside Chat radio broadcast of August 30, 1934, FDR said:
To those who say that our expenditures for Public Works and other means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that no country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order. Some people try to tell me that we must make up our minds that for the future we shall permanently have millions of unemployed just as other countries have had them for over a decade. What may be necessary for those countries is not my responsibility to determine. But as for this country, I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed and that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise measures against its return.
[...]
I believe with Abraham Lincoln, that “The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”
I still believe in ideals. I am not for a return to that definition of Liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few. I prefer and I am sure you prefer that broader definition of Liberty under which we are moving forward to greater freedom, to greater security for the average man than he has ever known before in the history of America.
The Democrats’ predicted defeat in the 1934 mid-term elections was averted. The nation rallied to FDR’s side in the battle against unemployment — for jobs and economic recovery. The core New Deal programs that most directly benefited working Americans, both employed and unemployed, were largely enacted the following year. The WPA alone went on to employ 8 million American workers.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s impassioned statements, refusing to accept joblessness for millions of Americans, were stirring words indeed. But they were not merely words. FDR and his administration were resolved and committed to enacting big, bold New Deal plans — like the WPA — to re-employ America. And they knew that the costs of not doing so would, in fact, be far greater.
That’s the resolve that was needed in 1934; and it is needed again today.
The author is the winner of the 2010 CREDO Mobile/Netroots Nation award for Blog Activist of the Year.
Tags: Barack Obama, FDR, jobs, New Deal, public jobs stimulus, unemployment
This is just a sampling of layoffs announced during the last seven days. The economic recovery we keep hearing about seems to be a well kept secret.
In Trenton, NJ a notice was sent out to all 1200 city employees, notifying them that layoffs were coming:
An estimated 111 police officers and 70 firefighters could be out of jobs, while 200 other city workers face unemployment.
In Massachusetts:
A second round of layoffs began yesterday at Northeast Hospital Corp., as the health care organization looks to eliminate up to 100 full-time positions.
Corporate handed out pink slips to personnel ranging from vice presidents to nurses yesterday at the nonprofit organization’s three hospitals, Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester, Beverly Hospital and BayRidge Hospital in Lynn, and two outpatient centers, Beverly Hospital at Danvers and the Cable Center in Ipswich.
In Kansas:
Cessna Aircraft Co. is issuing 75 layoff notices to employees at its Independence, Kan., plant Wednesday and Thursday, company spokesman Doug Oliver said.
In Mississippi:
The Masonite Mill in Laurel announced Wednesday they have laid off 83 employees saying market conditions are forcing the reduction in staff.
In Connecticut:
Officials from Pratt & Whitney have told union workers that the company will be eliminating 129 hourly jobs at the Cheshire Engine Center, union officials said.
In Utah:
LAYTON — Officials with Citi Commerce Solutions announced Wednesday they are laying off about 120 workers at the firm’s credit card service center in Layton.
The center at 2195 University Park Blvd. employs about 540 people and supports the private label credit division for Citigroup Inc.
In New York:
DeWitt, NY–New Process Gear Inc. Tuesday notified the New York State Department of Labor that it plans to lay off 107 workers in November.
In Florida:
MANATEE — Mosaic cut 140 employees from its South Fort Meade mine staff today as a result of the pending closure at the 10,885-acre tract.
In Nebraska:
An Omaha company that sells veterinarian products and equipment will lay off about 300 workers and sell all its assets.
Professional Veterinary Products said Friday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection to help facilitate the sale of its assets.
In Pennsylvania:
UNIONTOWN, Pa. — Defense contractor BAE Systems plans to lay off 124 workers - half of the work force - at its western Pennsylvania plant beginning in mid-October.
In Arkansas:
Fort Smith, Ark. - Whirlpool has expanded its planned layoff of refrigerator factory workers here this fall.
and
Whirlpool didn’t say how many workers would be affected by the actions, but local TV station KFSM-TV projected the number of pink slips at between 600 and 1,000.
In Missouri:
Food-and-facility services giant Aramark laid off 78 workers in St. Louis last month.
In Ohio:
AKRON, Ohio - Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic announced on Tuesday that the city will lay off 49 police officials, including 40 officers and 9 supervisors.
Tags: layoffs, unemployment
We’ve all heard the mantra of how the long term unemployed are lazy bums who should “go get a job at McDonalds.”
The wealthy folk who blame the unemployed for their plight also seem to believe that there are unlimited job openings available at the McDonald’s fast food restaurant chain. A number of job seekers in northern Nevada and California recently discovered that there the job openings at the chain are actually finite:
Thousands of job seekers turned out at McDonald’s stores in Nevada and California today as part of a “Hiring Day” event.
McDonald’s plans to hire about 1,000 people across 600 restaurants in the Pacific-Sierra region, which includes Northern Nevada and California.
From the Sacramento Bee:
About 300 applied at Courtney Ristuben’s five McDonald’s locations in Citrus Heights, Fair Oaks and Folsom. There, she saw “people from (age) 16 to folks with families; people with four-year degrees to others with résumés two pages long.”
The scene was repeated at McDonald’s restaurants from Sacramento to Visalia, Reno to the San Francisco Bay Area, with managers describing lines that formed around restaurants and spilled into parking lots, said Julie Wenger, a McDonald’s regional marketing manager.
Apparently even the McDonald’s chain doesn’t have over 15 million job openings.
Tags: jobs, unemployment
Paul Krugman in his column today:
As I look at what passes for responsible economic policy these days, there’s an analogy that keeps passing through my mind. I know it’s over the top, but here it is anyway: the policy elite — central bankers, finance ministers, politicians who pose as defenders of fiscal virtue — are acting like the priests of some ancient cult, demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods.
The entire piece is well worth reading as he picks apart the arguments put forward by the deficit-fraud austerity hounds, and then…
But, in America, we do have a choice. The markets aren’t demanding that we give up on job creation. On the contrary, they seem worried about the lack of action — about the fact that, as Bill Gross of the giant bond fund Pimco put it earlier this week, we’re “approaching a cul-de-sac of stimulus,” which he warns “will slow to a snail’s pace, incapable of providing sufficient job growth going forward.”
It seems almost superfluous, given all that, to mention the final insult: many of the most vocal austerians are, of course, hypocrites. Notice, in particular, how suddenly Republicans lost interest in the budget deficit when they were challenged about the cost of retaining tax cuts for the wealthy. But that won’t stop them from continuing to pose as deficit hawks whenever anyone proposes doing something to help the unemployed.
So here’s the question I find myself asking: What will it take to break the hold of this cruel cult on the minds of the policy elite? When, if ever, will we get back to the job of rebuilding the economy?
Tags: austerity, deficit-frauds, unemployment
Yesterday’s report of rising initial unemployment claims marked the fourth such increase in the last five weeks, and as Laura posted here, the 500,000 initial claims last week were the most since November 2009.
In the context of utterly stagnant private sector job growth, these reports scream for major stimulative action, including major new jobs programs from the administration and Congress as well as a massive Federal Reserve response to boost the economy.
What these reports also highlight is the need to strengthen the unemployment insurance programs already in place and extend them to the many newly unemployed workers, even as measures are pursued to address the crisis facing the already long-term unemployed.
The most recent extension of the federal unemployment benefit programs, which finally passed after a two-month battle to overcome Republican-led obstruction in the Senate, provides eligibility to those programs through the end of November for those who exhaust the 26-weeks of regular state benefits before that date.
In most cases this means that those workers who become unemployed after June 1, 2010 currently will not be eligible for the extended federal programs. That’s already a lot of newly unemployed workers. Since the first week of June, more than 4,600,000 initial claims have been reported.
Some of these recent initial claims are, no doubt, from unemployed workers who are filing anew following the end of temporary jobs, and are returning to the unemployment benefit systems in their states. It is not known what percentage of initial claims are re-entrants to the programs. But it is estimated that a much higher proportion are actually newly unemployed workers.
Congress will need to address extending long-term jobless benefits yet again when it returns from the August recess.
The author is the winner of the 2010 CREDO Mobile/Netroots Nation award for Blog Activist of the Year
Tags: jobless benefit extension, jobs, unemployment
In case you were wondering (Congress, pundits, and other elites, I’m looking at you), this is not good.
Fully 500,000 Americans filed new claims for government unemployment insurance last week, the highest number in nine months and a sign of persistent trouble in the job market.
Not good at all.
Everyone is familiar with the monthly national unemployment rate, which comes out on the first Friday of each month and now stands at 9.5 percent, according to the July numbers, the most recent available. That number gives us a monthly, detailed, deep look into unemployment in the U.S.
But the new weekly jobless claims number, which is released each Thursday by the Labor Department, gives us a faster, week-by-week snapshot of unemployment. And the picture is getting increasingly ugly.
Today’s number marked the third straight week of increase in new weekly jobless claims. That suggests that employers not only are not hiring, it suggests that they’re starting to lay off workers again, and that will start a whole cascade of problems for the U.S. economy and the politicians in Washington who face reelection this November.
It’s especially not good for California, Indiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Georgia.
And this is not enough of a silver lining to make this cloud do anything but pour on us.
The number of weekly unemployment claims is still far below the levels seen in early 2009, when initial claims were rolling in at a pace above 600,000 per week.
Neither is this.
President Obama used today’s bad jobs data to urge Congress to restart the stalled small business jobs bill that he said would help small businesses with tax cuts and expense write-offs, and would help small banks lend to small businesses.
We need more.
Tags: unemployment
Working America has been focusing on unemployment a lot for more than a year now, from the Unemployment Lifeline to tele-town halls to field organizing to our steady stream of actions in favor of job creation and unemployment aid extensions. And now that we’re coming up on elections, it’s time to think about unemployment as an electoral issue.
Which we’re doing with a campaign, covered today by the Huffington Post, to get our unemployed members to vote, knowing where the candidates stand on this issue specifically.
The organization is starting with 100,000 of its own members who are currently out of work. But the list of contacts could wind up being “several hundred thousand” of the nearly 15 million unemployed, said Karen Nussbaum, director of Working America. In Ohio alone, Nussbaum said, Working America has a list of 38,000 unemployed workers who are registered to vote — a major bloc that could tip the scale of the governor’s race as well as elections to the House or the Senate.
-snip-
The effort, which is the first of its kind, is an ambitious effort to re-balance the political landscape away from pro-corporate, pro-business interests. But will the unemployed vote for the candidates Working America supports? Democrats, after all, have presided over the past year-and-a-half of an epic jobs crisis and it’s not unreasonable to expect the jobless won’t be drawn to their candidacies.
“Our experience as we go door to door is that people are looking for an explanation about why this is happening to them,” said Nussbaum when asked about a potential Democratic backlash. “The knee-jerk response to get mad at people that are in power is in the absence of having a better explanation. You can talk about who’s standing in the way of investing in jobs. The fact that corporations have way too much influence in government, that makes sense to people, and that when you compare voting records, when you look at for example a Republican bloc that has voted against every single jobs bill, including this unemployment extension, that’s information people take in and act on.”
Tags: unemployment
