recession is over new credit bubble has began!

Great now my brother will have less of an incentive to get off his butt and go get a job.

Hope they pass it, I'm in NJ and I really need it.

@Colonel Jack O'Neill: SG-1 is always happy to have you back, even if you're getting a little long in the tooth.

How much does someone get from this benefit?

@WinterDog:
+1

@IR1: Unless your brother has no expenses to speak of, he still has an incentive to get a job. I have a very big incentive to find a job as I've been out of work since Jan 2009 and am burning through my savings (like they always told us to maintain). New York State's unemployment rate ($405 per week) is not covering my mortgage (let alone the rest of my bills). And before anyone asks, I bought my house in Sept of 2000 and refi'd back in 2003 to a fixed 5.5%, 30-yr loan.

@WinterDog:

+2

It depends on the state you're in. Here in MA it's an amount equal to half your average wage for the last 18 months. In other words, say you made $800 a week on average then got laid off, you'd get $400 a week. Taxes are not withheld but you are responsible for paying them on your 1040. Benefits run for 26 weeks normally.

How can the federal government look at one unemployed person living in say Utah and say he or she is better off than an unemployed person in say Michigan. Just because Utah's unemployment rate is 6.5% does not mean that that person has a better chance of landing a job. It doesn't make sense.

Very disappointing.

@nybiker: If your brother is like me, he's up against 10 other engineers for the same friggin jobs. What do you expect him do do, kill the rest of those pencil pushers out in the parking lot?

@Chumas: Actually... that's pretty brilliant. Can't do better than me in the interview if you've got a hole in the head!

Maybe not even that severe, but, maybe force all your competition to be terribly late to their interviews somehow. That would take a massive feat of engineering that one could respect.

Woooooo! And my funemployment continues!!!!

This is not good. Some people have already been on unemployement for a year straight.
The only reason they do not get a job is because they will make the same as unemployement, but will have to spend 40 to 50 hours a week working.

There is going to be a time when they will have to take shitty jobs or move. There should be no reason why tax payers should delay that any longer.

Also to only do this in states with > 8.5% is bullshit, it should be in the entire United States of America.

Time to start your own business.

Anyone check to see the Red and Blue aspects of the states that are getting the benefits extension?

Curious to see if the ones who drank the Kool-aide are the ones getting stroked now.

TLG

@The-Lone-Gunman: It's states with 8.5% or higher jobless rate. I really doubt that it's "Kool-aide" related at all, more just allocating the resources to the ones that are having the most trouble.

@joeblevins: It varies depending on the state. New York is around $400 per week, Chicago is around $300 per week.

@nybiker: Let me just say that I was not trying to make a blanket statement for everyone who is on unemployment.  Just my brother who is 23, still working on getting his bachelors and hasn't worked since November of last year.  There are plenty of jobs, retail etc at the very least he could do, but he is way to picky and believes this stuff is below him.  I keep telling him he needs to make getting his degree a priority and just work somewhere to make some money and get some kind of job experience.  But he seems content with cashing is gov check and spending on clubs, alochol and clothes.  His rent is low because he is renting a room from a relative.  So while he does have some incentive to get a job, its not much and its even less now.

@joeblevins: Depends on the state, your employment history, your wages, and the number of hours worked I think it ranges 75-90% of your salary up to a hard limit (that is set fairly low generally).

Also if you work part time you get to keep 20-25% of your benefit, and any surplus over that gets used to extend your benefit (so if you make 70% of your benefit working half time, your benefit will roughly double in length)

@threadislocked: I didn't know they still made people like you. Yes, absolutely everyone who is on unemployment is because they're lazy.

You also know that almost all states index unemployment so that you can never get the same amount of unemployment as you made when you were working. If you made $10/hr, unemployment pays you the equivalent of $7.5/hr.

I also don't understand your logic of wanted to spread it to all of the US, if you're opposed to it in the first place.

@The-Lone-Gunman: It's tied to unemployment rates, so I don't think there's a kool-aid factor.

@IR1: In addition to what yasth said, it also depends on what you were doing before you got laid off. I'm 23, have no degree (yet some college experience), and I've been laid off since last November. I'm not about to go get a job doing retail or 'something to just get by' on, when I was working for IBM before. Even if it *is* while just going out to finish my degree, having just any ol' kind of employment on a resume just doesn't cut it.

@ARP: That's being generous in some states. In CT, I was making $16 an hour. On unemployment, I'm getting about $8.50.

@IR1:

Whoopdy-fucking-do for you, living in the magic land where you can just pluck a new job from the trees like so much fruit. Some of us people who have been looking for months now cant find shit.

So tell me, Magic Man, where the fuck do I find a job?

Jackass.

I really don't know how to look at this...either way it is a very ugly situation.

1.) Stop unemployment benefits, some people will pick up whatever jobs they can find. For everyone else, it will mean a total cutback of everything, contributing to more economic problems.

2.) Keep giving payments to people, and they will have no desire to work, further adding to our ridiculous debt that is almost already impossible to be repaid.

We are in scary times, people. Unless we see an increase in jobs, we are completely and utterly f*cked.

@mbz32190: and it's fun when you finally get a job to be told before you start that you're being furloughed for the time being.....

and there are unemployed people out there who aren't eligible for unemployment because they never had jobs while in school, or the job couldn't be kept after graduation

@IR1: With brothers like you, who needs enemies?

Schmuck.

@threadislocked: Or the person could be in school because the industry they were in took a massive nose dive.

I was working in as a Tech in a Saturn dealership in September of last year. We can all see where that has led. Now I'm in school to become a Welder/Fabricator, only to be told that the lies I was fed by admissions are just that, lies. Just remember folks, college and trade school admissions people have quotas to fill and are willing to tell you any thing to fill them.

@billbillbillbill: it kinda does. lower unemployment rate = less competition.

There are a ton of start-ups in Silicon Valley that have a whole staff people working on an equity only basis while on unemployment.

Uncle Sam has displaced Sand Hill Road as the big VC on the block.

If unemployment pay ends, the next is step is .... welfare?

1.4 Billion? Maybe Goldman can give some of that money set aside for executive bonuses and help out the people that bailed them out. That's hardly even a dent in their bonus pool.

What do you think the odds of that are?

@reishka: In IN, I'm getting about 30% of my last salary.

But it's a lot better than nothing, and four weeks is enough to cover my mortgage and car payment. Plus I've been lucky enough to find contract work to fill in the gaps (of course the unemployment doesn't come through in weeks where I'm paid), so I'm a lot better off than I could be.

I'd say I don't understand the people who just collect it and roll, but I think I do. I know people who don't look past today ...

canada needs to extend their benefits too.

we extended the benefits by 5 weeks in the spring, and people can get extensions if they are enrolled in approved training, but we really need to do more.

we currently offer between 22 and 50 weeks (variable by unemployment rate, crossed with the number of hours the claimant worked over the year prior).

the weekly benefit amount is 55% of the average weekly earnings, up to a maximum of $447. not high enough.

Is there anyone here who's collected unemployment that actually did match their previous wages? Honest question. From some of the comments I gather than other states pay more benefits than Indiana (which is no surprise, I've also heard that we have more rigorous qualifications than some other states), which is a good thing, because if someone told me that I shouldn't need a job because I'm getting unemployment, my reply would be ...

you crazy.

But if there are states that pay 100% or close to it, then I could understand why some people would believe that benefit extensions would discourage people from looking for jobs. Because maybe somewhere they do. (other than among people who don't care how far into debt they fall)

@IR1: Hooray for deadbeat relatives! My mother lost her job for embezzling money from her employer. She's been out of work for over a year, and even before the investigation started she was happy as a pig in shit to be at home without a job. She refused to apply for even a grocery stocker job because she felt she was above it. Instead, she sat at home sucking off the government teat. It makes me sick.

@reishka: Yeah, I was pulling down $13.37/hour (teehee) when I got sacked, and now am making about $6.50/hour on unemployment. I'm glad I can cover my expenses... barely. And as SinDex23 noted, my industry's in free-fall. Perfect time for entrepreneurial spirit, too bad I don't know how to monetize reporting online.

@ARP und @Pink Puppet: I wouldn't be surprised if there was correlation sans causation. Namely, the states with unemployment rates that high happen to lean right, if only coincidental.

@zlionsfan: Unemployment is not intended to match previous wages, and the intention of the program is not as a "you shouldn't need a job because you're getting unemployment." The purpose of unemployment is to keep large masses of people from declaring bankruptcy due to a short-term period of unemployment.

The reason why some folks say that benefit extentions discourage job seeking is because some people will simply reduce their costs down to where unemployment pays for everything, then sit on their butts until the handout ends. And getting an extension is just enabling that undesired behavior.

Now granted not everyone is a dole-seeking slacker, but they do have to try to balance providing a safety net against preventing abuse.

Unemployment doesn't even come close to covering my bills. I bought a conservative condo well before what I qualified for, I have a 30yr fixed loan. If you live in a expensive area the caps are far too low. Max in Il is about $10hr. I've burnt through a ridiculous amount of saving in the 10 months of my unemployment. Jobs that require move than having a pulse are getting people with 5+ years experience applying for the entry level jobs. My industry pretty much has packed up and left town.

If you haven't been out there in the job market lately trying to find something in a place with unemployment up near 10% you should pretty much shut your hole. You have no clue how tough it is out there. What it feels like to send out application after application day after day, month after month and not even have 99% of the places have the courtesy to at least reject you. It a real soul crushing experience looking for work right now. Its not about being lazy. Its about getting rejected for jobs that 2 years ago would have been begging for you to come work there. Its about taking better than 50% salary cuts just to have a chance to find anything.
Its all well and good to be righteous and say you'd take a grocery clerk job rather than make the same on unemployment, but totally different when that's your reality. The money still isn't enough to survive, and you won't have time to send out those hundreds of resumes and attend the interviews you need to.

@h3llc4t has a slow work day: If your mother lost her job due to stealing from the company, I highly doubt she is able to collect unemployment.

@canuck:

Isn't that what the NDP and the PCs are working on right now? The NDP will back the government and stock the vote of non-confidence if and only if unemployment benefits are extended? I think it has to be for people who worked full time for a year consecutively, not sure on the amount.

At least, that's what my CBC news seems to tell me :)

Can they extend the health insurance COBRA subsidy too now? I got a job and no longer need unemployment, but since it doesn't include health insurance I still need to lean on the feds to subsidize the expensive premiums from my previous job. After November it's all over, and I have to find some policy that covers emergencies only for the same price.

@Mr.Duke: For you maybe. I don't qualify for welfare or SNAP benefit. If I can't get another two jobs to make up for my UIA, then I lose my home and vehicle.

@zlionsfan: $362 per week max on UIA in my state.

I don't receive that amount of UIA. I am not eligible for COBRA. I am not eligible for SNAP benefits.

@mbz32190: The times are scary.

I made peace with the fact that if I cannot find two jobs to cover the one I lost (for which I receive UIA benefits) I will lose my home and vehicle. I do not qualify for COBRA. There will be no "safety net" of welfare or SNAP benefits either. I will have to live with relatives.

@SinDex23: So true, so true. @Geekybiker: Yep, and the last thing someone who gave you the minimum wage job will encourage you to do is to go out to those interviews.
It's getting to the point that some engineering firms I've dropped apps off at are closed and the guy I talked with about hiring is next to me applying for a parts counter job at an auto repair store.