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Weak Job Creation Rates Indicate Need For Unemployment Extensions

by Todd Davis (neoxz34 [at] hotmail.com)
A short article about weak job creation rates, and
unemployment extensions.
The economy added just 21,000 jobs in February of 2004, which was well below the 128,000 that were expected by economists. The unemployment rate in California
is 6.5 percent, 6.3 percent in New York, and 6.7 percent in Illinois.

So far, Bush and Senate Republicans have managed to cut 760,000 people off from their unemployment extensions nation wide. According to Isaac Shapiro at the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities: “Despite his repeated expressions of concern for the unemployed, President Bush has so far ignored the plight of three-quarters of a million individuals who have gone without unemployment aid.”

In a letter to Senate Majority leader Frist, on December 22, 2003, Senator Clinton wrote that:

Unemployment conditions today are worse than they were when Congress enacted the TEUC program back in March of 2002. The unemployment rate today is 5.9%; it was 5.7% in March 2002. There are 450,000 more unemployed individuals today than there were then. The number of jobs has fallen by 300,000 since TEUC was enacted, and the number of individuals out of work for more than six months has risen by more than 700,000, an increase of 53%. Furthermore, three out of four individuals receiving unemployment insurance benefits are exhausting their benefits without finding work. We should terminate the TEUC program only when the job outlook for the unemployed is significantly better than it was when we enacted the program.

The current unemployment rate is currently at 5.6 percent, but that figure does not include those people who have given up on looking for jobs in this economy. David
Leonhardt noted in the New York Times, on March 5, 2004: “The decline is partly a mirage, many economists say, reflecting the large number of people who are not looking for work and thus not counted as unemployed. If the same portion of Americans were in the labor force last month as had been in June, the jobless rate would have been 6.4 percent last month.”

There was a vote on the Cantwell amendment on February 26, 2004 that was 58 to 39 in favor. The Cantwell amendment to extend unemployment benefits did not pass, because of procedural rules requiring 60 votes. Senator McCain, and Senator Dole voted in favor of the unemployment extensions.

Email the US Senate now to extend unemployment benefits.

http://www.unemployedworkers.org/index.cfm
http://clinton.senate.gov/~clinton/news/2003/2003C22827.html





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Todd Davis
Fri, Mar 26, 2004 1:29PM
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