Very different states of unemployment
How much someone gets in an unemployment check -- and even whether they're eligible at all -- depends a lot on where they live. Mitchell Hartman reports.
Unemployed workers wait to meet counselors at the One-Stop Employment Center in Columbia, S.C. (Mitchell Hartman / Marketplace)
More on Jobs, America's Financial Crisis
Links
- Part 2: State unemployment funds go bust
- Part 3: Are states fixing benefits programs?
- Voices and Images:
Oregonians and South Carolinians talk about the challenges of high unemployment - ProPublica Story:
Unemployment Insurance Is Not Working - ProPublica Map:
Is Your State's Unemployment System in Danger?
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: When we get the May unemployment report Friday morning it's probably going to show the economy has lost another half a million jobs. Conventional wisdom is that once somebody gets a pink slip they go down to the local unemployment office and file for benefits. And many do. But there ends the broad generalization. How much somebody gets in a weekly unemployment check -- or even whether they're eligible at all -- depends a lot on where they live.
Today we start a series on unemployment compensation, produced in conjunction with the investigative newsroom ProPublica. Here's Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman.
MITCHELL HARTMAN: The first stop on my tour of state unemployment systems is South Carolina. It's been hurting in this recession. Its unemployment rate is the third-worst in the nation -- 11.5 percent. The city of Greenville has seen many of its textile mills close. Now, the auto-parts plants that replaced them are cutting back.
TEACHER AT LITERACY CENTER: So, we're learning words, which are parts of speech. And then we'll remember how to make really good sentences with those words.
Some of the locals who get pink slips end up here, at Greenville's free Literacy Center.
ANTHONY CARBAJAL: March 19 was my last day of work. I didn't even know it was coming. No notice or anything.
Anthony Carbajal is 29. He's compact and powerful. It's easy to imagine him in his old job, welding metal crates for John Deere lawnmowers. But these days, Carbajal spends most of his time studying for his GED. He has house payments to make and three kids to support, all on his weekly unemployment check.
CARBAJAL: I'm getting $332 a week.
HARTMAN: How does that compare to what you were making?
CARBAJAL: Oh, not good.
Now, he's taking home 40 percent less.
Next, let's jump across the country to Oregon. It has the second-worst unemployment in the country.
I met Michael Dymond at a Portland coffee shop. He's also a welder with three kids to support. He used to make rail cars. But two-and-a-half months ago he got laid off. Dymond was making nearly $600 a week.
MICHAEL DYMOND: And when I'm on unemployment, it's about $425.
Let's run those numbers again. Two skilled workers whose paychecks differed by about 50 bucks. On unemployment, the South Carolina welder takes home:
CARBAJAL: $332 a week.
The Oregon welder:
DYMOND: $425.
ANDREW STETTNER: It really matters what state you live in. The levels of benefits vary extremely wildly.
That's Andrew Stettner of the National Employment Law Project. He says it's not just how much you get that's all over the map.
STETTNER: In some states it might be two-thirds of all unemployed workers are getting benefits. In some states it's less than one out of four.
This patchwork has existed since the New Deal, when unemployment insurance was first introduced. To get the plan through, states were allowed to set their own rules on key items like how they calculate benefit amounts and who's eligible. There are states where you can quit your job, you can even be fired and still draw benefits. In other states, you have to be laid off for strictly economic reasons.
And the discrepancies in benefits can really slam middle-class professionals. In low-paying states like Nebraska and Louisiana, laid-off workers cap out around $300 a week on unemployment, no matter how much they used to make. In New Jersey and Minnesota, they'd get double that. Even after accounting for cost-of-living differences, that spread is wide.
In Oregon, Michael Dymond's unemployment check is pretty good by national standards. But he complains it doesn't go very far.
DYMOND: There's no way to survive on that. The bills alone for the rent or the house payments, and the electric and the utilities, and with the car and the insurance, you know, it's almost impossible.
Which is one reason the federal government is pushing states to boost benefits. Oregon's received millions in stimulus money to put more low-income workers on the rolls. And residents can keep getting checks longer now, if they can't find a job.
South Carolina's governor rejected that stimulus offer from the feds. Many South Carolina political and business leaders share his opposition to making more people eligible for unemployment. They don't want to plow extra money into what they think sometimes functions as a "shadow welfare" system for people who can't find steady work.
Sara Googe and her husband have run a feed and seed store in the small town of Fairfax for three decades.
SARA GOOGE: Well, we sell baby chicks. We also sell a full line of garden supplies.
Googe says business is pretty good right now, despite the fact that nearly one in four people in this rural county are unemployed. She says locals often come in asking her to certify they've applied for a job, so they can stay on unemployment.
GOOGE: And I go, "You're not even looking for a job, why should I sign it?" I mean, this happens every week. I say, if they don't have a job, give them a shovel and a hoe and a sack of seed.
Soon, Googe may get her way. South Carolina's unemployment system is $350 million in debt from paying benefits in the deepening recession. So it may have to raise business taxes, or boot people from the rolls at the worst possible time for the local economy. More on that story tomorrow.
I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Bealteon, VA, 07/12/2009
My husband got unemployment benefits for I believe 3 months, than stopped; they send us a letter that was a computer error that he wasn’t eligible to the unemployment anymore.
After almost 4 months has passed since his last unemployment check we just got a letter/statement from VA Employment Commission with a $6,048.00 bill to pay the VA unemployment back due to their error, I couldn’t believe when I saw it...
How can they do that, say that was an error and that he wasn’t supposed to be eligible to receive the benefits that now he needs to pay back for this error?
In my understanding the same “error” that the VA employment commission instate that happens, could happen again and ZERO our balance!!!
My husband was without work for 6 months… They paid him the benefits during 3 months maximum….
I can’t believe this bill!!!!!
If you file for unemployment it's because you need the money.... we would never expect to be billed back from the unemployment commission!
What make them think that you will need to pay them back if you don’t have a job?
This is Unbelievable!!!!
Please help with any advise, comments… Thank You
From Orange, TX, 06/04/2009
i was makin about 9 Hun. a week as a boilermaker now work has realy cut out. i have a G.E.D. but right now bills are still comeing, with no work in sight.bills dont stop
From Portland, OR, 06/04/2009
Here's a question for you... I've worked for over 20 years and only claimed about 3 weeks unemployment benefits before this last time... where did the money go that was set aside as MY safety net? Every day I'm on unemployment I fall deeper and deeper in debt and wonder why I shouldn't be at least making enough to pay common bills with.
06/04/2009
11.5% can be flawed, not counting the underemployed and part time job workers, it maybe more like 18%
www.moneymonk.net
From Los Angeles, CA, 06/04/2009
Andre, Beach Bum... The link to the interactive map is above, in the Related box.
From FL, 06/04/2009
where is the interactive map?
From NJ, 06/04/2009
I thought there was an interactive map which allowed one the compare the weekly unemployment stipend or all 50 states. hhhmmmm, I guess not.
From Chicago, 06/03/2009
Mary, 'He took a part time, three, maybe four days, less then twenty hours a week data entry position with us to, as he put it, "support my expensive retirement hobbies."
Why did you hire him?
You got nothing. Let it go
From Herndon, VA, 06/03/2009
In the Commonwealth of Virginia, the way unemployment is distributed needs to be investigated! Last year we hired a man who had retired from a very high paying executive position. He collects over $80,000 annually in pension and Social Security payments. Obviously, he had something on the ball while working in his last job. He took a part time, three, maybe four days, less then twenty hours a week data entry position with us to, as he put it, "support my expensive retirement hobbies." The man consistently flubbed his job, failing to perform even the simplest of tasks (in particular, remembering to push one single computer key at the end of each job). He cost us the good will of several Clients and we lost money in making good on his mistakes. He was let go after several verbal and written warnings over months. He walked out of his final interview stating, "I don't need this job." He cleared out his desk, went home and filed for unemployment benefits. He is now making three times what he ever did with our company in those benefits. We have appealed the decision (twice) and were told (twice) while VEC agreed he was incompetent (something he blatantly admitted to in the VEC interview) and could not do the job, he was not guilty of misconduct, the only reason for payments not being awarded. He has collected, for months, more money than he ever would have made while working. Explain to me how we explain this to the college students who are working two and even three jobs with us and other companies (other shifts) to support themselves through school that someone can be rewarded for not performing a job? (They all saw the mess he generated every day.) A man who held an executive level position claims pushing a single computer key was beyond his capabilities and Virginia now rewards him with a bigger paycheck than some of these kids see for breaking their backs? Where is the justice? Will the Commonwealth of Virginia ever be held accountable for this outrageous waste of money which is seriously needed by persons who worked themselves hard and found themselves unemployed for reasons beyond their control? Mr. Hartman, can you help???
06/03/2009
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