Extensions available soon for unemployed
December 28, 2001
Elizabeth Murtaugh; The Associated Press
Thousands of Washington residents who have not been able to find new jobs in the slumping economy will soon get a late holiday gift: applications for extended unemployment benefits.
An estimated 41,000 workers may be eligible for up to 13 weeks of extended benefits because of the state's rising unemployment rate, state Employment Security Commissioner Sylvia Mundy announced. People will be able to receive the benefits for as long as 39 weeks.
The Washington State Employment Security Department began mailing out applications Wednesday.
Under state and federal law, Washington automatically qualified for the extension because its average unemployment rate for September, October and November topped 6.5 percent and was 110 percent of the same period last year.
Adjusted for seasonal changes, the unemployment rate hit 7 percent in November, the highest it's been in eight years.
Money from the U.S. Labor Department and Washington state's unemployment trust fund will pay for the additional benefits.
The last time Washington qualified for extended benefits was in 1992-93, when unemployment averaged 7.6 percent.
While the current jobless rate dwarfs that of few years ago, it's considerably lower than in previous economic downturns.
"It's much higher than in the late '90s when we had labor shortages, but it's not high yet," said Robert Pauer, a Seattle-based economist with the state Employment Security Department. "We have not had truly high unemployment for 20 years."
Still, it's not going to get any better in the next year, Pauer said. She predicted the jobless rate will hit 8 percent by December 2002.
That's twice the rate recorded in late 1998 during the height of the dot-com boom, but it's much lower than it was during the state's last recession, in 1981-82.
A nationwide recession and worldwide oil crisis in the early '80s hurt the airline industry and, by extension, The Boeing Co. That drove the state's unemployment rate to 12.1 percent in 1982 and 11.2 percent the following year.
A decade earlier, when Boeing slashed 65,000 jobs in 1971 and 1972, the jobless rate ranged from 9.5 percent to 10.1 percent.
In those years, Boeing made up a larger share of the region's economy.
It was worse yet in 1940, the first year the state kept such statistics. With the state still struggling to lift itself from the Great Depression, 15.2 percent of Washington residents were without work.
The economy's current problems are widespread and global, made worse by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"There is a worldwide economic weakness," Pauer said, "and you cannot point to any part of the world economy that is going to suddenly turn around and stimulate anything else."
As with previous recessions, Boeing is a major factor. The company plans to lay off 30,000 commercial airplane workers by the middle of next year, in response to weakened demand for airplanes in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
The company issued its third round of 60-day layoff warning notices last week, bringing the total number of announced job cuts to more than 16,000.
Dot-com layoffs delivered another major blow to Washington's employment base, costing some 15,000 workers their jobs. And in Eastern Washington, the shutdown of Kaiser Aluminum's two Spokane plants for much of the year idled about 2,000 workers.
Economists predict the national recession will last through next spring, while the state's downturn is not expected to end until next summer or fall.
An employment upswing will take longer. "Unemployment will rise even after the recession is over," Pauer said. "In a sense the economy is going to have to speed up enough to outpace ... the numbers of people that are unemployed."
Meanwhile, the job search continues for many residents in Washington and Oregon, the only other state eligible for the extended benefits.
In Washington, residents laid off within a year of Jan. 7 are eligible for the extension. The job-search conditions are more stringent than for regular benefits, requiring job seekers to make at least four contacts with potential employers each week.
Washington workers who live out of state are eligible for only two weeks of extra benefits.
People can begin applying for the extension on Jan. 7. The first payments will be made for the week ending Jan. 12.
The Employment Security Department is mailing applications to eligible workers, but applications can also be downloaded from the agency's Web site.