The 112th Congress may consider a number of issues related to currently available unemployment insurance programs: Unemployment Compensation (UC), temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC08), and Extended Benefits (EB). With the national unemployment rate predicted to remain high into next year, the increased demand for regular and extended unemployment benefits will continue. At the same time, the authorization for several key unemployment insurance provisions is temporary and will expire. For instance, the EUC08 program, which currently provides the bulk of extended unemployment benefits, is scheduled to expire the week ending on or before January 2, 2013. The 100% federal financing of the EB program will expire December 31, 2012. The option for states to use three-year EB trigger lookbacks expires the week ending on or before December 31, 2012. In addition, a temporary 0.2% federal unemployment tax (FUTA) surtax expired at the end of June 2011. The 112th Congress faces these expirations as well as other likely unemployment insurance policy issues, including unemployment insurance financing. In addition, recent policy discussions have focused on the appropriate length and availability conditions of unemployment benefits. This report provides a brief overview of the three unemployment insurance programs—UC, EUC08, and EB—that may currently pay benefits to eligible unemployed workers. This report also discusses relevant legislation introduced in the 112th Congress.
This report describes the history of temporary federal extensions to unemployment benefits from 1980 to the present. Among these extensions is the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC08) program created by P.L. 110-252 (amended by P.L. 110-449, P.L. 111-5, P.L. 111-92, P.L. 111-118, P.L. 111-144, P.L. 111-157, P.L. 111-205, P.L. 111-312, P.L. 112-78, and P.L. 112-96). This report contains five sections. The first section provides background information on unemployment compensation (UC) benefits. It also provides a brief summary of UC benefit exhaustion and how exhaustion rates are related to the business cycle. The second section provides the definition of a recession as well as the determination process for declaring a recession. It also provides information on the timing of all recessions since 1980. The third section summarizes the legislative history of federal extensions of unemployment benefits. It includes information on the permanently authorized extended benefit (EB) program as well as information on temporary unemployment benefit extensions. It also includes a brief discussion on the role of extended unemployment benefits as part of an economic stimulus package. The fourth section provides figures examining the timing of recessions and statistics that may be considered for determining extending unemployment benefits. The fifth section briefly discusses previous methods for financing these temporary programs. In particular it attempts to identify provisions in temporary extension legislation that may have led to increases in revenue or decreases in spending related to unemployment benefits.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.