Funding of state unemployment insurance programs
With jobs and the economy at the center of both major political parties’ nominating conventions, the unemployment rate stuck above 8 percent, and the shadow of Labor Day at hand, the Urban Institute has published a research brief explaining the nation’s battered unemployment insurance (UI) programs and how to improve their solvency.
“Financing Unemployment Insurance after the Great Recession,” by Urban Institute senior fellow Wayne Vroman, details how states’ UI programs are emerging from the Great Recession with severely depleted trust funds and how many face significant debts for years to come. Nationally, UI benefits totaled $469 billion from 2007 to 2011. Since 2008, 35 states have borrowed from the U.S. Treasury to sustain benefit payments.
