Unemployment Insurance (UI) Benefits, Financing, and Reemployment Services after the Great Recession

UI recipients received up to 99 weeks of benefits during and after the Great Recession, but many UI recipients still exhausted their UI benefits; meanwhile, additional funding for reemployment services disappeared, and most state accounts in the Unemployment Trust Fund went broke. This roundtable discusses what happened to UI benefits and benefit financing, the availability of reemployment services, and how many UI exhaustees went on to collect SNAP benefits.

1) Yvette Chocolaad, Employment and Training Director, National Association of State Workforce Agencies: Unemployment Insurance and Reemployment Services during and after the Recovery Act

This presentation summarizes the effect on the UI program and the provision of reemployment services to UI recipients of the implementation and termination of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  It summarizes and updates the findings of the 2013 book, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: The Role of Workforce Programs, edited by Burt Barnow and Richard Hobbie.

2) Randall Eberts, President, Upjohn Institute: The Impact of Resource Constraints on Reemployment Services for Unemployment Insurance Recipients

This presentation makes use of a new longitudinal data set, the Public Workforce System Data Set, to examine the effect of the growth and decline of funding for reemployment services for UI recipients in the period during and after the Great Recession.  It include analysis of the sharp decline in funding for reemployment services to UI recipients at the end of 2010  -- contributing to high levels of long-term unemployment of form UI recipients.  The presentation is based on a July 2014 Monthly Labor Review article by Eberts and Wandner, as well as two reports by Wandner recently published by the Urban Institute.

3) Wayne Vroman, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute: Benefit Financing Issues in the Wake of the Great Recession

Vroman examines the challenges and responses to the unprecedented recessionary UI benefit costs and insolvency of the state accounts in the Unemployment Trust Fund. The presentation also discusses a major new study of UI benefit financing that is being conducted for the U.S. Department of Labor.

4) Christopher O’Leary, Senior Economist, Upjohn Institute: Interactions between UI and SNAP

O’Leary examines interactions in usage between the UI and SNAP programs using longitudinal administrative data for Michigan.  As long-term unemployment reached historic heights during the Great Recession, many UI recipients who exhausted all their entitlement to UI benefits applied for and received SNAP benefits.  His presentation is based on analysis done as part of a major new study – the first to link UI benefits and SNAP administrative data – funded by the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

5) George Wentworth, Senior Staff Attorney, National Employment Law Project: New Developments in the Short-Time Compensation Program

Wentworth examines the development of the U.S. short-time compensation program in the period since the beginning of the Great Recession and state responses to recent federal legislation that encourages states to adopt and promote the short-time compensation program.

Moderator: Stephen Wandner, Visiting Fellow, Urban Institute and Visiting Scholar, Upjohn Institute

Underwritten by DirectEmployers Association