By Andrew Perez
Posted: Updated:
WASHINGTON — What’s happened since Congress killed long-term unemployment insurance in December proves the jobless aren’t lazy, according to one state workforce agency.
The Illinois Department of Employment Security announced this week that 86 percent of the state’s long-term unemployed were still without work at the end of January, according to a study by the agency.
“This seriously undermines the perception that unemployment insurance discourages workers from finding employment,” Jay Rowell, the Illinois agency’s director, said in a press release. “You should look at this analysis as confirmation that re-authorizing emergency unemployment is a cost-effective way to help families stay in their homes and put food on their tables. But you cannot look at this and say that people don’t want to work.”
Congress allowed emergency unemployment benefits to end for 1.3 million Americans at the end of the year. Federal benefits should kick in when state benefits expire, and with 70,000 people running out of state benefits each week since then, more than 2 million have lost out on payments altogether. In Illinois, 74,000 residents stopped receiving benefits at the end of 2013, and 64,000 of those individuals were still jobless at the end of January, according to its workforce development agency.