Senate can take wise, right step: Aid jobless

It’s no secret these are tough times for many hard-working Georgians. Just last month, the Labor Department reported that Georgia’s unemployment rate is 6.5 percent, a 16-year high, with 317,500 Georgians unemployed and actively looking for work. Since January, the state has lost almost 88,000 jobs and slipped into recession.

The economic crisis in Georgia and the country raises the question: Will Congress and the president extend unemployment benefits to help families get back on their feet and pay their skyrocketing expenses as work gets harder and harder to find?

That’s the question Theresa Metzger recently asked Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). A single mother of two Clayton County school-aged children, Metzger was laid off from her administrative-assistant position at a local college more than a year ago. She’s one of about 30,000 Georgians — and 800,000 workers nationwide — who have run out of state unemployment benefits and the limited 13 weeks of emergency federal benefits, which passed in June.

“I was granted only 16 weeks of unemployment benefits, which helped but was not quite enough as my search for employment produced [no] results,” Metzger wrote Isakson. “I have been working steadily since the very young age of 13. I have contributed hundreds of dollars to Social Security and paid thousands in taxes. All I am asking for is the favor to be returned.”

In Georgia, unemployed workers like Metzger collect an average of $272 per week of state unemployment benefits, just 39 percent of the state’s median weekly wage, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Only 28 percent of unemployed Peach State workers collect state benefits, the 40th lowest rate in the nation. And 39 percent of Georgia workers run out of their maximum 26 weeks of state unemployment benefits.

State jobless benefits are funded by a state payroll tax, just as federal extended benefits are financed by a federal payroll tax. Both the federal and state funding for unemployment benefits come from the state and federal unemployment trust funds. Set up to generate revenue from the unemployment payroll taxes during good times, these trust funds are supposed to pay benefits during hard times. The federal unemployment trust fund and Georgia’s unemployment trust fund have adequate reserves to handle paying benefits this recession. In fact, Georgia’s fund is more solvent than most in the nation.

Just before the congressional recess, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to expand jobless benefits, providing a total of 33 weeks of federal assistance for workers in especially hard-hit states like Georgia. The Senate can now do the same.

More people are collecting unemployment benefits now than at any time in the past 25 years. The national unemployment rate of 6.5 percent is at a 14-year high, and if it rises to 8.5 percent, as many economists predict, that would be higher than the unemployment rate in the 1990s recession. Last week, 517,000 new claims for unemployment benefits were filed, only the third time in the past 16 years that number exceeded 500,000. Most economists predict the recession will last through 2009, much longer than the average recession. And if this recession is like those in the past, unemployment will not peak until after it has ended.

In an economy grappling with crises on several fronts, it is prudent and wise to help Georgia’s hard-working families keep their homes and pay for basics like food and fuel. Jobless benefits maintain consumer spending, providing a boost to communities hardest hit by the economic crisis. As Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Moody’s Economy.com, notes, jobless benefits are key to economic recovery, boosting economic growth by $1.64 for every dollar in benefits that circulates through the economy.

Like many jobless Americans today, Metzger is unemployed through no fault of her own. She wants to work but can’t find a job. She’s not asking for a bailout. She’s asking that the U.S. Senate, including her own senators, Isakson and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), do right by unemployed Georgians — and the state’s economy — and act quickly to extend federal jobless benefits.

• Christine L. Owens is the executive director of the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit that conducts research, education and advocacy in support of low-wage workers.