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Home » Unemployment Benefits » Why Are Fewer Peo­ple Get­ting Unem­ploy­ment Ben­e­fits?

Why Are Fewer Peo­ple Get­ting Unem­ploy­ment Ben­e­fits?

June 18, 2019 by Lisa Guerin

Photo of people waiting applying for unemployment benefits
At the end of May 2019, the national unem­ploy­ment rate was 3.6%. The last time the rate was that low was 50 years ago, when Richard Nixon was pres­i­dent and “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies was the top Bill­board hit of the year. A low unem­ploy­ment rate is good news for employ­ees and those look­ing for work, espe­cially in grad­u­a­tion sea­son. But hid­den in the sta­tis­tics is a more trou­bling trend: Of those who are unem­ployed, fewer are receiv­ing unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits.

Accord­ing to a recent report by the National Employ­ment Law Project (NELP), the recip­i­ency rate for unem­ploy­ment insurance—the per­cent­age of job­less work­ers who are actu­ally receiv­ing benefits—has dropped sig­nif­i­cantly in the last decade or so. The report says one dri­ving force behind this change is state laws mak­ing ben­e­fits less gen­er­ous and harder to get.

States Are Mak­ing It Harder to Get Unem­ploy­ment Ben­e­fits

Some of these changes to state unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits include:

  • cut­ting the dura­tion of ben­e­fits to fewer than 26 weeks (which used to be the national stan­dard)
  • mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to keep get­ting ben­e­fits after ini­tially qual­i­fy­ing, through weekly “con­tin­u­ing eli­gi­bil­ity” require­ments, espe­cially search­ing for a new job, and
  • increas­ing the amount a worker must have earned while employed to qual­ify for ben­e­fits.

In states that have made changes like these since the Great Reces­sion, recip­i­ency rates have fallen sig­nif­i­cantly; more gen­er­ous states show ris­ing recip­i­ency rates in the same period.

The report points out that these changes don’t just affect work­ers; they could affect our economy’s abil­ity to weather another reces­sion. Unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits pro­vide a much-​needed safety net to work­ers with­out jobs, and fam­ily mem­bers depen­dent on their income. By putting money into the hands of those who must spend it, these ben­e­fits also act as an eco­nomic stim­u­lus. With fewer work­ers eli­gi­ble for lower ben­e­fits, the report warns, the unem­ploy­ment sys­tem may not be as pow­er­ful a mea­sure to fight reces­sions (or soften their blow) in the future.

More Infor­ma­tion

To learn more about qual­i­fy­ing for unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits in your state, see Legal Con­sumer’s unem­ploy­ment law learn­ing cen­ter.

Filed Under: Unemployment Benefits Tagged With: unemployment rate

About Lisa Guerin

Lisa Guerin has covered employment law topics for Legal Consumer since 2014. After getting her law degree from Berkeley Law, she worked in government, public interest, and private practice, specializing in employment law. She was a legal editor and author at Nolo for many years, where she wrote or contributed to more than a dozen books, mostly on employment issues. She volunteers with groups that help shelter and rescue dogs, and she enjoys hiking with her own Very Good Boy in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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