Millions of Americans One Check Away from Homelessness

As benefits expire, long-term unemployed make do with less




On Dec. 28, 1.3 million Americans lost their unemployment insurance when an emergency federal unemployment insurance program expired. Critics of extended unemployment benefits say the benefits raise jobless numbers by allowing people to stay unemployed longer instead of taking an available job. But people like Trista Selmar-Steed, a 38-year-old former medical biller who lost her job in 2012, say the benefits have kept her family above water while she looks for work. Special correspondent John Carlos Frey reports from Georgia.


If you cut unemployment coverage of course unemployment goes down... The measure of unemployment only counts those on unemployment... If you cut 1 million people off unemployment then the next day the unemployment rate will go down 1% How does that help our get our culture to a new era? I'm sick of this current era of humanity can we please try something new? I really hope Newshour starts giving 3rd party opinions more coverage even during off election seasons. We need a bigger think tank, arguments shouldn't boil on for 55 months, we should of tried multiple approaches by now.
Systemic problem begins with all the capitalists and the greed. Not that capitalism is wrong, its that human capital (which is the most important) is valued the least by those who pay this is exactly opposite of the way it should be. If employers would give employees a partnership in profits with the company( and NOT JUST A TOKEN PAYMENT) then productivity would rise as well as efficiency. Workers are just not considered valuable in America