By Dave Lucas
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Albany, NY – There's good news and bad news for unemployed New Yorkers who've been left stranded in the job market. Capital District Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports.
According to US Labor Department statistics - Weekly jobless claims have generally remained at the 450,000 level since reaching a peak of more than 650,000 in March 2009. Requests for unemployment insurance have been stuck near 450,000 since the beginning of the year, after falling steadily from a peak of 651,000 in March 2009.
In New York State, the monthly unemployment rate has been on the decline since February 2010, when it was 8.8% - New York State's 3 month average unemployment rate for April, May and June is 8.3%. This is now below the 8.5% three month average unemployment rate that is required by the federal government to trigger six weeks of additional benefits under Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Tier 4. The U.S. Department of Labor has informed us that, starting August 16, no new claims can be filed for Tier 4 benefits.
This will reduce the maximum number of available weeks of UI benefit from 99 weeks to 93 weeks. However, the UI bill states that all extended benefits will end the week of December 5, which means that most unemployed New Yorkers will not be able to reach a maximum of even 93 weeks.
In "normal times" New York's unemployed collect a maximum 26 weeksworth of state unemployment checks. During the current recession, the US Congress has granted benefit extensions. A new Zogby Interactive survey finds 48% of Americans agree extending unemployment benefits justifies increasing the deficit.
Over 2 million Americans have been without any jobless benefits after Congress allowed the federal extended-unemployment benefit program to expire. The 34 billion dollar jobless-benefits extension, moving through Congress, offers everyone, including many New Yorkers, a ray of hope.The bill would restore the 93 or 99 weeks of benefits to about 2.5 million unemployed Americans.
UNEMPLOYED NEW YORKERS! Check your benefit status here.
Job postings in the Capital Region rose again this past week, coming in at just about 4950, which is an increase over the previous week (4560) continuing to improve for the second week after several downward trend weeks. " It appears that the long holiday weekend around the 4th and perhaps some pent up demand on the employers side has buoyed the job posting count, good news for job seekers", stated Dan Moran, Founder & President of Next-Act: "Last week I reported that this looked like the beginning of an upward trend and it has continued. Let's hope we move in the right direction for weeks to come". Moran also added that there are signs that employers may cool hiring plans later in the 3rd quarter which is just starting. "We'll have to watch this to see what happens". Other markets in New York State (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse) saw similar increases, with the exception of New York City metro market which saw a decline after several weeks of growth and improvement in job postings. The Capital Region is the smallest of all these markets as well. Moran says if you're jobless now is NOT the time to stop looking for work!
RELATED: UTICA, New York - Likely voters are divided about the importance of not increasing the federal deficit relative to spending measures and tax cuts, a new Zogby Interactive survey finds Click here to read it in PDF format], as 53% of likely voters agree federal spending on jobs is more important than the deficit.
When respondents were given a list of budget items that may increase the federal budget, and asked to choose which are justified, infrastructure projects had the most support (50%), followed by extending unemployment benefits and business tax breaks (48% each).
The Zogby Interactive poll of 2,055 likely voters was conducted July 9-11, 2010 and has a margin of error of +/-2.2%.