84 WHAS - DEPEND ON IT! -
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Published on: 7/30/2001
Last Visited: 4/20/2002
Ken Jensen, senior economist for the Utah Department of Workforce Services, allows that the state's employment picture is hardly rosy.Indeed, for the week ending April 6 -- the most recent available -- jobless claims jumped to 22,875, up 67 percent from the same week a year ago.
Still, the picture in not as bleak as the national study paints, Jensen said.
For example, the report notes that Utah was among 14 states where unemployment eligibility requirements "are so narrowly drawn that two-thirds or more of unemployed workers do not qualify to receive any benefits at all."
That indictment is less stinging when put in perspective, Jensen argued, defending Utah's criteria for eligible filers as "weeding out the people who are only marginally attached to the labor market."
The Bureau of the Census, in reviewing 2000 figures, divided the jobless into four categories -- job losers, job leavers, job market re-entrants and new entrants.Of the 36,000 unemployed two years ago, researchers found that only 38.3 percent fell into the job losers category, people laid off who generally are considered most worthy of unemployment assistance.
That leaves re-entrants (43.3 percent) and new entrants (7.8 percent), none of whom would be eligible, since they lack recent work histories, and the job leavers (10.6 percent)."Job leavers, making a voluntary decision to quit, at least initially shouldn't be eligible, either," Jensen said.
Utah and 34 other states earned an "F" for recession preparedness.Researchers looked at whether the states had adopted a"total unemployment rate trigger," an option kicking in federal funding when unemployment tops 6.5 percent; if states had their own extended benefits packages; and whether states had eliminated or modified requirements that workers had to endure at least one week of uncompensated unemployment.
Utah's answer to all three questions was "no," but Jensen said there was a more essential preparedness issue to be considered: the fiscal resiliency of state jobless benefits funding."If the soundness of the finances of the unemployment system was the criteria, in that, Utah remains very sound."
Still, unemployment insurance in the United States is in dire need of fixing, the study contends, and recommends several urgent policy changes.Pointing to the $8 billion in new unemployment funding recently passed by Congress, researchers called for nationwide benefits restructuring.
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