State labor officials: Extend benefits for jobless

Labor commissioners from 18 states urged the U.S. Senate on Thursday to act immediately to extend unemployment benefits for 300,000 people who will exhaust theirs in another week.

"We're here because we are facing an unemployment crisis of epic proportions," said New York Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith, surrounded by counterparts from around the country. "Families are suffering. Unless further action is taken, more suffering is on the horizon."

The group urged the Senate to follow the House's lead and agree to give the jobless in states with unemployment rates topping 8.5 percent an additional 13 weeks of benefits. The immediate effect would be to keep help flowing to 300,000 of the 400,000 people whose benefits would stop this month. Through the end of the year, it would protect more than 1 million people.

"These are not faceless people," said Stephen Geskey, director of the Unemployment Insurance Agency in Michigan, where unemployment is 15.2 percent, the highest in the nation. "They are our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our sons and daughters. My staff ... are already receiving calls from desperate people wondering, `What are we going to do next?'"

The labor officials were in Niagara Falls for the annual meeting of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, whose leadership passed a resolution seeking even broader extensions of benefits as a way to keep the unemployed from ending up on welfare.

"The cost then will shift from the federal government to the state and local governments, and we know how difficult times are," Smith said.

The resolution asks Congress to eventually expand the 13-week extension to all states and provide a 20-week extension for high unemployment states. It also would preserve through 2010 the $25 that was added to people's weekly unemployment checks by the stimulus act passed last February.

Said Keith Kelly, commissioner of the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, "8.5 percent is just a number. There are people behind all of those numbers stacked up and that help is needed universally, wherever you're at in the United States."

John Lasky, 48, of Lewiston, north of Buffalo, said his unemployment check has allowed him to keep his home since losing his job as a district manager last November. Despite being willing to accept a job that pays considerably less than the more than $50,000 he was earning before, the father of two said the competition for work is fierce.

The recession, which began in December 2007, has eliminated a net total of 6.9 million jobs and an average of six unemployed workers are competing for every job, according to government data.

"There are so many qualified, good, hardworking people out there," Lasky said, "and you're going against all of them."

The unemployment rate is now 9.7 percent, and economists see it topping 10 percent next year.

The 18 states seeking immediate extensions of unemployment benefits are Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin.