Bush ignores jobless workers

Hours before they adjourned for the holidays last month, Republican House leaders cited the “improving economy” as reason why they blocked action to extend federal unemployment insurance (UI) for jobless workers unable to find work before their insurance benefits expired.

Elaine Smith of Portland-based Service Employees Local 140, and another 8.7 million unemployed workers share a different view of an “economic recovery” that so far is not a jobs recovery.

Roughly 2.3 million private-sector jobs have disappeared since the recession began in March 2001 and there are at least three unemployed workers for every new job opening.

According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 2 million unemployed workers — approximately one-quarter of those unemployed — have been looking for work for more than 27 weeks without success. The percentage of jobless workers who have been unemployed for more than six months is at its highest level in 20 years. And the total number of long-term unemployed workers is greater now than when the emergency federal program was enacted in March 2002.

Smith is a 51-year-old, second-generation custodian who worked 23 years in the Portland Public School District before being replaced by a contract workforce in July 2002. She has been looking for another job ever since, supplementing her husband’s income with a weekly unemployment insurance check of $309 (after taxes).

She was notified Dec. 8 that her federal extended benefits would end Dec. 13. The reason cited: “because the unemployment rate has fallen.”

Officially, national unemployment statistics for November declined from 6.1 percent to 5.9 percent. Oregon reported a decline from 7.6 percent in October to 7.3 percent in November. The drop moved it from the highest unemployment rate in the nation to second highest, behind Alaska.

An analysis of the state’s employment and workforce data by the Oregon Center for Public Policy shows that over the past 12 months, starting with an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent in November 2002, to a peak of 8.5 percent in June, and a return to 7.3 percent last month:

• Oregon lost 8,000 jobs; and,

• Oregon’s labor force shrank by 34,000 workers.

Significant job losses and a growing population of working-age adults over the last year did not impact the unemployment rate because 34,000 workers left the labor force altogether, after fruitless job search, OCPP said.

It reported that between June and November 2003, the labor force declined by 63,000, while the state added only 2,400 jobs. The “labor force” includes all employed and unemployed workers. To be counted as part of the labor force, a jobless person must be looking for work.

“Oregon must still create 159,000 jobs to overcome the damage from the 2001 recession,” said OCPP analyst Jeff Thompson. “A declining labor force is not a recipe for economic recovery or cause for celebration.”

Smith is among those long-term unemployed. But, because she has exhausted all of her unemployment insurance benefits, she is — statistically speaking — no longer counted among the jobless.

If the Labor Department counted Smith and others like her, unemployment numbers nationally would exceed 10.2 million — and that wouldn’t include the nearly 5 million Americans working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs.

Because Congress refused to reauthorize the federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program, 90,000 jobless workers began running out of benefits every week across the U.S as of Dec. 21. In Oregon, more than 20,000 jobless workers have lost or will soon lose their UI benefits.

Smith said without unemployment insurance coming in she will have to cash out a life insurance policy and dig into a savings account to survive.

“I’m lucky that I have that to fall back on,” she said. “I know a lot of others who don’t.”

The AFL-CIO has been holding press conferences and rallies to spotlight the need to extend the TEUC program. In the weeks before Congress reconvenes Jan. 20, the AFL-CIO and others will call on lawmakers to make the UI extension legislation one of its top agenda items, said AFL-CIO Legislation Director William Samuel.

The TEUC program gives workers who have exhausted their state UI benefits an additional 13 weeks of federal UI. They can receive a total of 26 weeks of federal benefits in states with unusually high unemployment, such as Oregon and Washington.

House and Senate Democrats introduced legislation — H.R. 3244 and S. 1708 — that would have extended the TEUC program through June 30, 2004, but Republican leaders refused to act on the bills before the holiday recess.

During debate on the House floor, Oregon Congresswoman Darlene Hooley reminded her colleagues that the federal government has a $20 billion balance in its unemployment insurance trust fund.

Republican Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon moved to reauthorize the program, but his motion was objected to by fellow Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.