Large numbers of unemployed reach end of the line

At the beginning of October, two years into the worst economic downturn in decades, 11,000 jobless workers in Oregon were thrown off the unemployment insurance rolls. Most of them had been unemployed for more than 18 months. Since then, 400 more a week are losing benefits. They’re at the end of the line; they’ve used up their benefits, and still they’re without work.

They’re entering what Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt called “a black hole for thousands of jobless” — unemployed, but no longer counted because they’ve exhausted benefits.

On Oct. 14, Nesbitt organized a press conference to call for an immediate benefit extension. Three of Oregon’s five members of Congress attended: Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, and David Wu. Wu is sponsoring a bill — House Bill 3156 — that would tap the federal unemployment trust fund to extend unemployment coverage 13 weeks.

“A jobless economic recovery does not help the unemployed,” Wu told reporters.

Since President Bush took office in January 2001, the United States has lost 2.7 million jobs. Oregon has been among the hardest-hit, losing 54,200 jobs since then, including 28,900 in manufacturing and 7,400 in construction.

The national employment rate remained steady in September at 6.1 percent (as did Oregon’s at 8 percent). But long-term unemployment worsened. Those without jobs for at least six months now make up 23.2 percent of all jobless workers — the highest rate of long-term joblessness recorded since 1983, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Nesbitt said today’s unemployed are also more likely than ever before to be better educated and higher skilled workers.

Last session the Oregon Legislature passed two extensions of unemployment insurance, even raising the employer payroll tax to do so.

“Our state did its part,” Nesbitt said. “Now Congress needs to do its part.”

“Congress is preparing this week to borrow $87 billion in the name of the American people to pay Iraqis for no-show, no-work jobs for the stability of Iraqi society,” said DeFazio. “Yet the president and Republican leaders are not willing to release money from the unemployment trust fund, which has a $20 billion surplus, to provide extended unemployment benefits for the millions of long-term unemployed workers who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves on the wrong side of this jobless recovery.”

Since March 2002, Congress has extended unemployment benefits three times, most recently in Spring of 2003. But the extensions didn’t help the long-term unemployed, DeFazio pointed out.

Wu said the fate of his bill is uncertain. The Republicans have an alternate bill, sponsored by Washington Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn, which would continue to fund the status quo: 13 weeks of extended unemployment benefits, or 26 weeks for those states that have the highest unemployment rates.

Wu said the Bush Administration wants to hold on to the unemployment trust fund surplus because it makes his budget numbers look better.

Nesbitt and the members of Congress were joined at the press conference by several unemployed workers, including Sandra Michaels, a long-term Boeing and Intel worker who had to sell her house last year because unemployment benefits didn’t go far enough.

“An employed middle class is the fountainhead of this country’s economy,” said unemployed data processing worker Mitch Freifeld.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.