Thousands of local jobless face loss of benefits

About 20,000 unemployed people around Illinois - more than half of them from Chicago and the suburbs - could see the end of their extended benefits starting this week.

With the Recovery Act set to expire April 5, Congress adjourned last week without addressing another benefits extension. So people who have exhausted their benefits without finding a new job will not be eligible for additional weeks of unemployment payments unless Congress provides another extension and makes it retroactive to March 27, Illinois Department of Employment Security spokesman Greg Rivara said Monday.

"An additional 7,000 will exhaust (their benefits) in the next five weeks," Rivara said.

About 550,000 people in Illinois are currently collecting unemployment benefits. Standard unemployment benefits last 26 weeks, with various extensions pushing that up to a maximum of 99 weeks.

The National Employment Law Project in Washington, D.C., said about 956,064 people nationwide, including 71,029 in Illinois, will exhaust their benefits before finding a new job. They are the people who will lose access to all forms of extended federal jobless benefits when the Recovery Act expires next Monday.

The whipsawed jobless also faced these woes just last month.

The U.S. House passed a bill but the Senate failed to act immediately, and an extension was eventually approved for another month.

Still, the unemployment benefit system was never set up to be a permanent source of income for those experiencing employment problems. It was created as a temporary replacement of lost income to tide workers over until they found new employment, said Michael Miller, economics professor at DePaul University's College of Commerce who specializes in unemployment issues and the economy.

"So, 'temporary' must have some ending date, and I think that many citizens who have sympathy for folks in this bad labor market will still conclude that two years is enough," Miller said.