Extended unemployment benefits remain far-flung albeit Obama administration's efforts to have it reinstated.
Before 2013 ended, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program was terminated by the Congress, stripping legions of jobless Americans its benefits. The program promising benefits for Americans who are out of work for more than 26 weeks has been previously delayed by Senate Republicans.
However, to everyone's surprise, Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez affirms the possibility of its re-establishment cannot be discounted.
"I haven't given up the fight and I applaud the efforts of [Senator] Jack Reed, Senator Heller from Nevada, and Senator Collins from Maine. It's been a bipartisan effort in the Senate. And never in the history of our nation has Congress, with long-term unemployment rates as high as they were last year, failed to extend emergency unemployment compensation. Never, that is, until last December," Perez said via The Fiscal Times.
He added, "I sure wish [Speaker] Boehner would do what I do, and that's meet with the long-term unemployed ... because when you understand the human face of this, you understand that we need to extend these benefits, because it's a lifeline for folks, it's not a lifestyle," he added.
Job-seekers are only left to lament on the lack of right skills to score a decent job. Employers stick to the qualifications, slamming heaps of resumes unsuccessful to surpass company-imposed standards. The President has initially been lauded of taking heed of an increasingly upsetting reality. His "call to action" imploring every corporation for major hiring process overhaul is still being campaigned.
Frontier Communication, a rural company, has recently built manpower from 250 long-term unemployed Americans beginning January. KPMG, an auditing and tax advisory services firm employed 300 job-seekers. Comcast will soon follow as the company already devised a brand-new employment recruitment policy that guarantees employment for the long-term unemployed.
In a recent report by the U.S. Labor Department, jobless claims follow a downward slope. The lowest level of unemployment applications in 14 years has been recorded recently— a 23,000 drop to the seasonally adjusted rate of 264,000. The Bureau of Labor Statistics translates that to a 5.9 percent plunge. The government agency sees national unemployment rate on a downhill. It appends that the monthly job additions amounted to approximately 246,000 during September. The data was only indicative of economic growth, meaning unemployment benefits and the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program may be rendered insignificant.
