Expect your Unemployment Rates to Rise in 2009
by TedStates face unemployment cash crisis
Job losses mount: 1.2 million in ’08
State unemployment insurance trust funds are rapidly running out of money amid soaring job losses.
This is prompting state officials to consider raising employer taxes or curtailing benefits, while forcing them to borrow from the federal government to cover claims.
“Some states didn’t have adequate reserves built up,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project.
The number of people collecting state unemployment benefits hit a 25-year high of 3.84 million, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said Thursday. The following day, the department announced that 240,000 jobs were lost in October, pushing the unemployment rate up to 6.5%, up from 6.1%. It’s the highest rate since March 1994. Nearly 1.2 million jobs have been lost this year.
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