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 »

Jason Hidalgo
Reno Gazette-Journal

A struggling Northern Nevada could benefit from President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed economic recovery plan, which would create jobs and provide federal aid, according to proponents who urged legislators Thursday to support it.

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By Sean Whaley
Las Vegas Review-Journal

CARSON CITY — Nevada’s unemployment jumped again in September, hitting 7.3 percent for the highest jobless rate in nearly 23 years, a state agency reported Monday.

The state’s seasonally adjusted rate was up two-tenths of a percentage point from August and up 2.3 percentage points from September 2007.

The last time the unemployment rate was this high was in November 1985, according to the report from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
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The economy has taken a serious turn for the worse for workers and their families. There has been a significant surge in unemployment, and Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, and Ohio are some of many states that have been hit particularly hard.

The nation’s unemployment rate reached a five-year high of 6.1 percent in September. Nearly 10 million Americans were officially unemployed last month and still actively looking for work. Unemployment claims are now at a seven-year high, with nearly 500,000 workers applying for benefits every week.
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