There are 6.4 jobseekers for every unfilled job - and that gap is growing. Two-thirds of Americans are close to someone who is out of work. And joblessness is worst for communities of color, youth, and women who head households. While the investments made through the federal economic recovery legislation have created or saved over 1 million jobs so far, the recession is so deep that more federal action is urgently needed.

Congress and the Obama Administration are working on job creation plans. What should they do? How can we build support for job creation that does not leave the poorest people behind?

Listen in to hear the answers from a January 28, 2010 webinar featuring Deborah Weinstein from the Coalition of Human Needs, Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change, and Alan Charney of Jobs for America Now!

Click here to listen

The Senate is considering legislation to spur job creation, but it isn’t clear if the bill will include policies to create jobs for the communities that have been hit the hardest in this recession. There are three provisions that can create or save over 2 million jobs in low-income and minority communities while helping the economy overall and lifting up all Americans.

Call your senator today at (202) 224-3121 and ask them to support a jobs package that includes:

• extension of unemployment benefits and the COBRA health insurance subsidy through the end of 2010 by February 19.
• investment in direct job creation that addresses long-neglected needs in communities.
• aid to states and localities to prevent further job losses and service cuts.

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Alexandra Cawthorne of Center for American Progress and Melissa Boteach of Half in Ten write for the The Hill’s Congress Blog about the importance of extending Unemployment Insurance Benefits as soon as possible.

Another week passes and still no up or down Senate vote to extend unemployment insurance. This is no time to play politics. This is no time for “dithering.”

According to the National Employment Law Project, every day 7,000 additional workers are running out of unemployment benefits. That means that since the House passed its bill to extend unemployment insurance on September 22, approximately 266,000 workers have been left high and dry while the Senate continues to delay a vote on this crucial legislation—and 7,000 workers yesterday, 7,000 workers today, and 7,000 workers every day that the Senate puts off this vote are being pushed closer and closer to this brink. Read more »

This January, Half in Ten joined with the National Employment Law Project, NELP, to urge Congress to include urgent reforms to the Unemployment Insurance system in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA. The antiquated unemployment insurance system had failed to ensure equal benefits for low-wage workers, part-time workers, workers who left work due to “compelling family reasons,” and long-term unemployed individuals. Low-wage workers are only one-third as likely to collect unemployment benefits, even though they have double the chances of being unemployed. For this reason, UI reform was one of the 12 steps that the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty identified to cut poverty in half in ten years.

Congress listened to advocates, and included unemployment reform in ARRA, allocating $7 billion for the project. And these reforms have begun to reach unemployed workers across the country. Earlier this week, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report (PDF) detailing the “unprecedented wave” of unemployment insurance reforms that has swept across the country since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) became law on February 17th, 2009. Read more »

From Coalition on Human Needs, a Half in Ten partner:

When Congress passed its Budget Resolution on April 27, it generally endorsed the President’s priorities. The Budget Resolution only answers some of the year’s policy-making questions: what, and, at least as far as the annual appropriations bottom line is concerned, how much. Advocates were pleased with the “what” answers: Congress committed to grapple with comprehensive health care reform and climate change, two of the President’s top priorities. The Budget Resolution also commits Congress to many other legislative tasks, including reauthorizing child nutrition programs, making student loans cheaper by reducing the role of private lenders, and creating a home visiting programfor new parents, as the President proposed.

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In his presentation, The Science of Early Childhood Development: Closing the Gap Between What We know and What we Do, Dr. Jack Shonkoff illustrates the ways that stresses like poverty can permanently impair children’s development.

Poverty and Early Childhood Development (pdf)

Unemployment Insurance helps keep families from losing their homes and falling into poverty when workers lose their jobs, and economists tell us that it is among the most effective forms of stimulus.

Click here to tell your members of Congress to include UIMA in the recovery package today! Please note that this campaign is no longer active.

February 4, 2009

Click here to read Half in Ten’s summary on the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

From the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a Half in Ten partner-

Take Action Now:

Call your senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them to help the children and families most in need by passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (S.1) with a Child Tax Credit (CTC) without an earnings threshold. Read more »

Harry J. Holzer
The Urban Institute

As the nation’s labor market slides into a deeper recession, what kinds of employment and training provisions should be included for our least-educated and most-disadvantaged workers? Read more »

Both the House and Senate economic recovery bills would expand the federal Child Tax Credit, but there’s a major difference between them. Twelve million low-income children would benefit more from the House version: 2.2 million additional low-income children would qualify for the credit and 10 million more would receive a larger credit. The House approach would translate into an additional $3.9 billion total for very low-income families.

The difference between the two approaches occurs because the House bill counts all family earnings when calculating its Child Tax Credit, while the Senate bill only counts earnings exceeding $6,000 a year. Working families with earnings below $6,000 are therefore helped under the House bill, but not the Senate version, and other low-earning families get a larger credit under the House bill because all of their earnings are considered when the credit is calculated.
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