1.3 million to lose jobless benefits by year's end

Source

In the past year, nearly 5.5 million people exhausted their 26 weeks of standard benefits without finding work. The government says the "exhaustion rate" is the highest on records dating from 1972.

Some 3.4 million people now depend upon extended benefits approved by Congress lasting anywhere from 20 weeks to a year — the longest period of extensions ever added.

The length of these extensions vary by state, depending on the unemployment rate. More than half of all states have unemployment rates that triggered 53 weeks of extended benefits.

The government does not track how many jobless Americans have exhausted both their standard and extended benefits, but experts estimate the figure to be nearly 100,000 — and rising

Every day it gets worse and worse.... Despite what the current admin keeps telling us ... I just want to know what happens when all 5.5 mil run out of time and money what happens then?

[edit on 4-9-2009 by DaddyBare]

All 50 states will have insolvent unemployment accounts long before this happens. As it stands right now we've already seen California run completely out cbs5.com... they are now entirely on the federal dole. Florida is next www.wjhg.com...
It's difficult to find current numbers, apparently because quite a few states ran dry last year already and have been on the federal taxpayer dime for many, many months already... www.kentucky.com... Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky... New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, South Carolina, all insolvent. I can't imagine very many states (if any) out there are actually going to be able to stay solvent even long enough for those 5.5 million to lose benefit eligibillity, let alone handle the millions who will still lose their jobs in the coming years.

What happens then? Who the hell knows. The only certainty as I see it is, whether employment improves or further deteriorates, those of us with jobs are going to be looking at some seriously huge tax increases coming our way alongside gross inflation. There's really no other destination that this path can lead. Not only will we (tax payers) have to pay the feds back for the unemployment money our states have borrowed, but we'll also have to simultaneously replensih those unemployment funds, AND pay the G.D. interest on the debt the feds are selling to borrow the money they're turning around and loaning to the states.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


You know in one way I'm thankful I'm retired now but in another I wonder if that Gov. check will still be cashable in another year?

No only losing benefits but the amount of money that states have to borrow to support the unemployment, with less taxable income generated from the work force we are indeed heading from very fragile untested territory in this nation.

But do not despair, the Markets are rallying on the bad news of Jobless America

reply to post by DaddyBare



My dad retired after 29 years with the NMSH&TD (sorry, NM DOT now) 2 years ago. He's told me that there is some serious concern there about the future of the state employees retirement fund, enough so that he's actually picked up another job in the last 6 months and has been saving all that second income as a safety net. Supposedly that fund was sold to the state emloyees years ago as being untouchable except for retired employees and recession proof. Amazingly it's come to light that both claims were bald faced lies. He also said that the state is trying to nickel and dime current employees to decrease the state's retirement comitment in coming years when those people retire.

Sad, sad world when a man invests almost 30 years of his life and a portion of every paycheck towards the goal of enjoying his later years and then has to spend them worrying about money he's already been "guaranteed" to have.

Originally posted by marg6043

But do not despair, the Markets are rallying on the bad news of Jobless America

You noticed that too, Marg? It reminds me of, oh, approximately one year ago when all of this just started to come to a head. We hadn't experienced any signifigant crashes yet, but the market was teeter-tottering, up one day, down the next. Those ups correlated with news of rising layoffs back then, same as happened today. Seems like Wall Street still believes there are too many Americans with jobs. Wonder how they'll respond when the next big bank fails? We couldn't possibly be watching a carbon copy of Fall/winter 2008 just with lower gas prices at the end of summer, could we? NAH, what am I talking about, that'd just be too crazy!

This is the road to total economic collapse. When the social safety nets fall apart due to lack of maintenance and too much load, the people will stop spending anything because they can't afford anything. Then the next round of foreclosures will happen, first with the resident homeowners, then the investor homeowners who had to kick out their tenents for not paying rent. Then the electric companies will destabilize because all of these houses are sitting dark.

My question is where are all of the homeless going to stay when the money dried up and the foreclosures start back up?

reply to post by burdman30ott6


Is a trend, the markets are rallying on bad news in America specially the job statistics.

To me seems that somebody is making very good profits on Americas demise of the work force, either that, or somebody is funneling money into the markets to avoid a downward spiral after bad news.

Manipulation at its highest and nobody is watching, very strange things going on.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


I had to go look for it but here's the latest on NM State workers

say they're upset when the legislature decided to force all state employees, from teachers to corrections officers, to put 1.5% more of their pay into their retirement plans to save the state money.

The fact that those same lawmakers are exempt has made them livid, they say. Union members say the extra money taken out of their checks amounts to a pay cut.

notice how the law makers managed to give themselves a raise in the process...
source

reply to post by rogerstigers


Another thing to add is the shear numbers of people desperate for money are making our crime rates surge across the nation...

Wonder when theft of the contents of peoples refrigerators passes auto theft?

reply to post by marg6043


Reminds me of stories of the dust-bowl era... only this time there's no place to flock to, in fact people are now leaving Calif and Florida in record numbers,,,

reply to post by DaddyBare


Completely off topic, but you may find some relevance in it. New Mexico wouldn't be in the greatest of shape even without this recession. I am a die-hard conservative/libertarian voter, so it is tought for me to say this, but the state has essentially been in crash mode since Bruce King was foolishly voted out of office thanks to Casey Luna's greedy power play in '95 which left all the Luna supporters refusing to vote for King. NM has really had it's share of losers occupying that office, current governor included. Multi-million dollar roads to nowhere built purely to appease cronies who complained about how long it took them to drive between Albuquerque and the northern communities, multi-million dollar light rail projects that have so few riders the trains cost the state over a hundred dollars per rider instead of making the state money or at least breaking even, ridiculous space ports that cost millions of dollars on the sketchy speculation that someday NM will become a launching base for space tourism, a prison system that has been turned into hell on Earth thanks to past administrations accepting high security level gang bangers from California and introducing that (at the time) new mentality into the population, potentially poisoning the area around Carlsbad by accepting other state's nuclear waste for a WIPP site that isn't even guaranteed to remain secure, I could go on all day. The state has be mismanaged for many years and really the only reason they haven't been one of the worst suffering states in this recession is because the whole Southern half of the state is agriculture based and home prices (outside Alb, Santa Fe, and Taos) never really experienced much of a boom period. (My parents own a 4 bedroom on 20-some odd acres in the south and it appraises for about $100,000. I live in the Puget Sound area, the same house with the same amount of land would be in the $20 million range here and no, I am not kidding about that... 20 acres alone up here would probably fetch that by itself.)

That said, it does break my heart to see people I grew up with and love who work for that state getting shafted.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


Its because of the points you just made that our greatest export is our own people... Look at me I left to do my thing with the Marines when I retired from there I didn't come back right away I moved to Wyoming to work the oil fields for a time... if I had stayed in the state I might very well have become another of the many on welfare roles because that pays more than prevailing wages...

Why we retired here was, as you stated, it's still cheap

[edit on 4-9-2009 by DaddyBare]

sorry double post

[edit on 4-9-2009 by DaddyBare]

reply to post by DaddyBare


Totally get what you're saying. I grew up there, went to NMSU (because it was by far the best education for my dollar available anywhere in this country at that time), and immediately moved away to make my career. I have missed some things (my parents, the desert during a thunderstorm, good Mexican food, and the sound of quail in the morning outside my window all come to mind) but when I've visited in the past 9 years I've noticed all the mom & pop stores I grew up with have closed and, for the most part, many of them are either vacant or have payday loan schysters now occupying the old buildings.