End Of Jobless Benefits To Affect Thousands Of El Pasoans

Nearly 2 million Americans will stop getting unemployment checks this month because Congress did not vote to renew extended jobless benefits by Nov. 30.

Unemployment claimants will begin phasing out of their benefits and will not move through all the benefit extensions that were available before.

Lauren Macias, of Workforce Solutions Upper Rio Grande, said Unemployment Insurance Business Support estimates about 1,500 claimants will be impacted by the end of Employee Benefits and the inability of claimants to progress to Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) or another tier of EUC as of benefit week ending on Saturday, Dec. 4 and 3,200 claimants by week ending January 1, 2011.

Through the end of October, there were 466,000 people in Texas receiving some type of nemployment benefits, including about 13,815 people in the El Paso area.

Approximately 117,000 more people have run out of all types of benefits: regular unemployment insurance and all the extra weeks of federally funded unemployment benefits. Some people who became unemployed in 2008 and haven’t found a job qualified for as much as 93 weeks of benefits.

Texas Workforce Commission estimates 85,000 more people to be affected immediately if Congress does not extend the deadline bringing the total number of people who have run out of all types of benefits to more than 200,000 (117,000 plus 85,000 more)

TWC said it will continue to instruct claimants to file for their benefits if they are still unemployed, so that if Congress extends the deadline, we can pay those claimants retroactively.