Social Security
Unemployment insurance was created in 1935 as part of the Social Security Act, and an extended benefits program for long- term unemployed workers was put in place in 1970. The law allowed state governments to levy payroll taxes on employers to fund the program. Weekly payments vary by state. Out-of-work Americans can collect $405 in New York, $235 in Mississippi.
An emergency unemployment program was started in July 2008 for Americans who exhausted their benefits by being unemployed for 26 weeks or more. The program has been amended 11 times, allowing some recipients to collect payments for as long as 99 weeks, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The most recent amendment was signed last year, extending federal help through the end of 2013.
The average millionaire New York household collected an average of $13,590 in unemployment benefits during 2010, or a maximum of 33 weeks of benefits.
Payments Triple
Nationwide, unemployment benefit payments rose to $94 billion during the 2012 budget year, almost triple the $33 billion paid in 2007, the Congressional Budget Office said. Payments peaked at $150 billion in 2010.
Real unemployment, which includes discouraged workers and people working part-time for economic reasons, peaked at a seasonally adjusted rate of 17.1 percent in April 2010. The figure stood at 14.3 percent in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In central Harlem, where almost 1 in 3 people are poor and more than half the neighborhood isn’t part of the labor force, a line that frequently extends almost down the block to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street continues to form outside the state unemployment office early in the morning.
Clark James, 42, waiting outside the office, said he was laid off from his job as an assistant manager at a nonprofit organization last month. His eyes widened at the thought of millionaires receiving jobless benefits.
No Millionaire