Right now very few workers have exhausted their unemployment benefits, but there is tidal wave coming. The Law Center estimates 0.5 million workers will have exhausted their extended benefits by the end of September, and close to 1.5 million by the end of 2009. Unless the unemployment rate starts to decline, the numbers will continue to grow rapidly in 2010.
There’s a lot of coming pain and misery in those numbers. If unemployment runs out for someone just holding on by a thread, it means foreclosures, evictions, homelessness, and hunger. We need to figure out ways to help them now.