Welfare Rolls Soar Along With Unemployment

Reach 500K mark as employers again cut back

(AP) - New applications for unemployment insurance reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November, a sign that employers are likely cutting jobs again as the economy slows. The Labor Department said today that initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000, the fourth increase in the past five weeks. Wall Street economists forecast that claims would drop. More»

Recovery robust enough to pull 15M off unemployment rolls unlikely

(NEWSER) - "Jobless recovery" is no mere catchphrase to the millions of Americans that the middle class has shed from its ranks. Many have been out of work for so long that they've exhausted unemployment benefits as the systems strains under what one expert says is "the reality of long-term unemployment" for which it was ill-prepared. And even as the economy turns around, the New York Times reports that jobs may in fact be years away. More»

(NEWSER) - A rough milestone on the jobless front: The average length of time it takes to find a job—26.2 weeks—now exceeds the standard length of unemployment benefits—26 weeks. That's first time it's happened since the Labor Department began keeping stats 60 years ago, reports Bloomberg. The bit of good news for job-seekers is that Congress has temporarily extended benefits up to 59 weeks in hard-hit states and is working on another extension. More»

...in just the first 6 months of 2012

(NEWSER) - Come June, about 70,000 people will lose long-term unemployment benefits sooner than they expected, bumping the number of people who've had the rug pulled out from under them in the first six months of the year to nearly 500,000, the New York Times reports. Congress renewed its extended unemployment program in February , but reduced the maximum number of weeks from 99 to as low as 63. How quickly benefits disappear is determined largely by how much unemployment has increased recently, meaning hard-hit states like California, which has 11% unemployment, lost benefits early because things hadn't gotten worse. More»

Number of advanced degree holders on public assistance doubles

(NEWSER) - Melissa Bruninga Matteau has a PhD in medieval history, and a job as an adjunct professor, but she's still relying on food stamps and Medicaid to get by. "I am not a welfare queen," she tells the Chronicle of Higher Education . But with take home pay of only $900 a month—of which $750 goes to rent—she's only scraping by. And she's not alone. The number of people with graduate degrees who receive federal aid more than doubled between 2007 and 2010. More»