Unemployment Insurance

Thanks to a recent dip in the national jobless rate, unemployed workers who use up their state-administered unemployment insurance after Sunday will be eligible for less extended federal insurance. Last year, Congress passed a $5.7-billion bill granting additional unemployment benefits of 20 weeks or 26 weeks, depending on the state in which the beneficiaries live.

The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday voted to simplify the way Social Security taxes and unemployment insurance are paid for domestic workers. The panel voted to raise the wage threshold from $50 in each calendar quarter to $1,750 a year in 1993 and to index it for inflation thereafter.

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance rose by 7,000 last week after reaching the lowest level in more than a month, a government report showed. The increase in initial jobless claims to 325,000 was from a revised 318,000 filed the week before, the Labor Department said. The four-week moving average of claims, a less volatile measure, rose to 341,750 from 340,750.

First-time claims for U.S. jobless benefits last week held at a level suggesting an improving labor market, but wage growth in the last year has dragged along at its slowest pace in more than 20 years. Wages rose 0.6% in the second quarter and are up just 2.5% over the last 12 months, the Labor Department said. The department also said initial claims for state unemployment insurance rose 4,000 to 345,000 last week.

As many as 115,000 women who were denied unemployment benefits in California between 1968 and 1976 will share $26 million in a settlement of a longstanding discrimination suit, state officials announced Friday. The payments of up to $1,200 each are the result of an action filed by Betty Ann Boren, a Kern County woman who quit her waitress job because she was unable to find child care.

There's another insurance crisis in California: The state unemployment insurance fund is broke. While elected officials, business executives and labor leaders bemoan the condition of the workers' compensation system, they are also struggling to rescue the program that channels money to Californians who lose their jobs. Low-profile talks between employers and unions are being mediated by the Schwarzenegger administration in hopes of crafting a solution by late spring.

Moving to assist laid-off workers and to stimulate the economy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Gov. Gray Davis today will sign legislation boosting unemployment benefits by $100 a week starting Jan. 1, the first such raise in nine years. Davis vetoed similar legislation last year.