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The end to federal jobless benefits for nearly 2 million people has sparked a bitter debate in Congress about whether Washington is abandoning desperate households or simply protecting strained government coffers.

It is also providing real-time answers to a question economists have long pondered: How do people survive when they suddenly have no money coming in?

Never in more than 65 years have so many workers been without a job and without a government lifeline. Congress cut off 1 million people en masse in December when it permitted a special emergency program for the long-term unemployed to lapse. Since then, their ranks have been growing by about 72,000 a week, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), which lobbies on behalf of the jobless.

On Tuesday, in testimony before Congress, Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen highlighted long-term unemployment as one of the central challenges of the U.S. economic recovery. Not only is it a sign that the labor market is still weak, she said, but it also shows that economic growth is falling far short of its potential.

The problem has also consumed White House officials, who worry not only about how to get these people back to work but also about how they get by. Former White House chief economist Alan Krueger said he once visited an off-track betting site in the middle of the day in hopes of finding cutoff workers and interviewing them about how they were supporting themselves.

“I still couldn’t figure it out,” said Krueger, who returned last year to his job teaching economics at Princeton University. He dubbed the phenomenon “the Kramer effect,” after Cosmo Kramer, the eccentric “Seinfeld” character who had no clear means of support.

Someone who loses a job typically receives unemployment benefits from the state for 26 weeks. During the recession, however, the number of people who remained out of work swelled, and Congress voted in 2008 to provide additional aid that made checks available for as long as 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states.

Last year, lawmakers cut the maximum benefit to 73 weeks. Then, at the end of December, Congress let federal aid lapse altogether.

Mitchell Hirsch of NELP said people were “thrust essentially overnight from a situation where they were struggling to make ends meet with their benefits into one where they’re now struggling just to survive.” Six weeks later, he said, “what we’re hearing .?.?. is increasingly desperate.”

According to a 2012 report by the Government Accountability Office, Social Security is the government program people turn to most often after exhausting unemployment benefits. But the share who do so is relatively small, just 18 percent. An additional 6 percent apply for disability insurance, and just 3 percent use government aid designed for families and children.

Regardless of whether they qualify for government help, the vast majority also rely on private sources of income — a mishmash of personal savings, odd jobs, credit card debt and loans from friends and family, the report found. About half also live in two-person households without children, which means they are more likely to have another income to rely on.

Still, those varied sources of cash typically are not substantial, the GAO said: Four in 10 people who had exhausted unemployment benefits in 2012 earned less than twice the federal poverty level — or less than $22,340 a year.

“It’s not like they’re trying to maintain their lifestyle,” said Rutgers University professor Carl Van Horn, who is researching long-term unemployment. “They’re trying to survive at a lower standard of living.”

Lillian Humphrey of Baltimore has resorted to selling baby toys that her 1-year-old great-grandson has outgrown, asking $10 or $15 on Craigslist. It is the only money she has coming in these days. But there is still plenty of money going out the door — for her mortgage, gas and electric bills and for her osteoporosis medication.

Humphrey was laid off from a photography company a year ago. That job paid less than she had made for the previous 40 years working at an insurance company and at a warehousing business. Now, she is hoping to find a position that pays at least $10 an hour. But she has had no luck.

So on Jan. 2 — the first business day after her jobless benefits ran out — Humphrey applied for Social Security benefits. At 62, she is eligible. But the decision means she will receive smaller retirement checks than if she had waited to enroll at age 65, potentially reducing her standard of living for the rest of her life.

“I want a job,” Humphrey said. “I still to this day want a job.”

President Obama is continuing to press lawmakers to revive federal benefits, though a plan to extend them for three more months failed last week to clear the Senate. The proposal would not have a major impact on overall economic growth; analysts estimate it would increase the nation’s gross domestic product by less than half a percentage point.

But advocates for the jobless say even a brief extension would make a huge difference in people’s lives.

“Some members of Congress are just in complete denial about the severity of the economic downturn,” said the Rev. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, which has seen demand for food and other forms of aid jump since federal benefits lapsed.

“Some people are interpreting the fact that we’re seeing signs of economic recovery as saying, ‘Okay, folks are all right,’?” Snyder said. “That’s just not true.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/what-do-the-jobless-do-
when-the-benefits-end/2014/02/11/e135d74a-8eb7-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html

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If you're "too good" for part time retail or food-service industry work and the meager pay, then I don't pity you when the benefits run out.

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Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

What do the jobless do when the benefits end?

Crime.

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But here's the weirdest thing Evolv said it has discovered: Criminals can make better employees than anyone else. Evolv calculates that employees with criminal backgrounds are 1 to 1.5 percent more productive on the job than people without criminal records, and the firm said that difference in a large company "could result in tens of millions in profit and loss gain."

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Get a part time job. Get 2 part time jobs. Get 3, if need be.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Get a part time job. Get 2 part time jobs. Get 3, if need be.

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and if you can't get a part time job, or 2....

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Originally posted by whozit:
This year The Home Depot will be hiring 80,000 people. When their bennys end they can go get jobs, instead of living off of ME! I work 40 hours or more every week, I PAY MY OWN BILLS!

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by whozit:
This year The Home Depot will be hiring 80,000 people. When their bennys end they can go get jobs, instead of living off of ME! I work 40 hours or more every week, I PAY MY OWN BILLS!

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You also pay the politicians; they're living off you. They just PRETEND to work for it....

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I know, this angers me

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Originally posted by AURaptor:



Try harder. Ask for help from local and (gasp) even religious organizations. Move ?

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:



Try harder. Ask for help from local and (gasp) even religious organizations. Move ?

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And you think that people don't do that?

Do you think unemployment spikes because suddenly a whole load of people decide to throw in their jobs and live off benefits?

Or could it be, and I know this will blow your mind here, that there are less jobs than people seeking work

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I'll just sit around, reply to the troll and live off benefits...

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Originally posted by second:
Data Says You Should Hire Criminals

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Or could it be, and I know this will blow your mind here, that there are less jobs than people seeking work

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:



Try harder. Ask for help from local and (gasp) even religious organizations. Move ?

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And you think that people don't do that?

Do you think unemployment spikes because suddenly a whole load of people decide to throw in their jobs and live off benefits?

Or could it be, and I know this will blow your mind here, that there are less jobs than people seeking work

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Repeal of ObamaCare will go a long way to letting business get back to putting folks to work.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:


Oh, no doubt about it. But Obama and the Left ( yes, there IS a connection here ) chose to work on expanding the reach and grab of govt instead of recovering the economy. It only follows that a weaker economy needs fewer workers, who'll then need to be taken care of... by who ? Uncle Sam !!!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Obamacare was just passed. But where have the job creators been for the past six years?

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It's just one excuse after another for why they've consistently failed to perform their primary function. They've got a lot more money now, so what's their problem?

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Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Repeal of ObamaCare will go a long way to letting business get back to putting folks to work.

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So will THIS.



Care to guess what my preferred option is ?

Be careful what you wish for.

-F

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Repeal of ObamaCare will go a long way to letting business get back to putting folks to work.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

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Originally posted by second:
Data Says You Should Hire Criminals

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Well here's the thing, I WAS a crook, and a damned good one in that I never effectively got caught, part of that involved at one time decking a public defender trying to take a dive and plead me...
But anyhows...

What makes me so goddamn GOOD at security work is that I got into it, initially from the OTHER end, and because of that I know every trick in the book, and how to counter them - and having done so in a far more bitter and volatile crucible (Baltimore) than these little podunk townships, the would be thugs here are so out of their league it's goddamn laughable, and they KNOW this - and thus, leave us alone, not necessarily for the sake of anything I actually DO, but for the fact I am employed here, reside here, and will take massive umbrage at any transgression on my "turf".

You don't go in the dragons lair and poke it with a stick, not unless the take is worth it, and given the median income here is less than 30K, it ain't never gonna be.

-Frem

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Who was it that said that O-care would be a job & people killer? Yet, rich folk get EXTREMELY richer................

So, tell me Rap, where are the jobs? Where's the trickle down we were promised? How is it that the 1% is making so much money, yet the economy has been determined to be failing? I don't get it!? (actually, I do. The question is rhetorical)

I know why - it's Ben Ghazi.


SGG

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
RAPPY- you have not responded to my point. Therefore I'm not responding to yours.

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Isn't that the rationale for some peeps being so rich? So that they can "create jobs" with all that money??

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Funny, for a change I'm not feeding the troll...hahahahahaha!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Dear god, please make me stop!!!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Do you think you can live by those rules?

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