Despite Job Growth, A Record 2 Million Unemployed Have Gone Without Benefits

Publication Date: June 2004

Publisher: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): Isaac Shapiro

Research Area: Labor

Keywords: Job creation; Economic inequality; Income diversity; Economic projections

Type: Report

Abstract:

Thankfully, for three months running, the labor market has again been generating significant numbers of new jobs. Unfortunately, new Labor Department data show that over the same three months an exceptionally large number of jobless workers exhausted their regular benefits and did not qualify for further federal aid. The high level of “exhaustees” continues a pattern in place since late December, when the federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation program quit providing additional aid to individuals newly exhausting their regular benefits. The lingering high level of exhaustees suggests that the program was turned off too soon, and that it takes more than a few months of significant job growth to substantially reduce the problems of the long-term unemployed.