[PDF] Strengthening Unemployment Insurance For The 21st Century eBook

Author : Stephen Woodbury
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 30,32 MB
Release : 2011
Category :
ISBN :

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The Great Recession has placed unusual demands and stress on the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program and revealed problems in the system's adequacy, coverage, funding, reemployment services, and administration. This brief presents an agenda of research questions that a panel of experts believe must be addressed in order to improve the UI program. It is the product of a national roundtable on Strengthening Unemployment Insurance for the 21st Century, convened by the National Academy of Social Insurance in Washington, DC, on July 13, 2010, and funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and the Direct Employers Association. The event brought together about 70 government officials, legislative staff, researchers, employer and worker representatives, and others. This brief elaborates on the research questions identified by the roundtable as essential to improving the UI program.

Author : David E. Balducchi
Publisher : W.E. Upjohn Institute
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 29,70 MB
Release : 2018-09-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0880996528

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The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a lasting piece of the Social Security Act which was enacted in 1935. But like most things that are over 80 years old, it occasionally needs maintenance to keep it operating smoothly while keeping up with the changing demands placed upon it. However, the UI system has been ignored by policymakers for decades and, say the authors, it is broken, out of date, and badly in need of repair. Stephen A. Wandner pulls together a group of UI researchers, each with decades of experience, who describe the weaknesses in the current system and propose policy reforms that they say would modernize the system and prepare us for the next recession.

Author : Lori G. Kletzer
Publisher :
Page : 26 pages
File Size : 31,45 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Labor market
ISBN :

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"Despite significant changes in U.S. labor market, the basic structure of the nation's unemployment insurance (UI) program has remained unchanged since it was created in 1935. The current system is in need for reform in order to meet the needs of a twenty-first century workforce. Shortfalls in the current program fall into four categories: (1) overly restrictive eligibility criteria have resulted in low recipience rates; (2) benefit levels are low; (3) the federal tax system used to finance the program is regressive; (4) and the mechanism to automatically extend UI during periods of prolonged economic downsturns is broken. As a result of these and other factors, only about one-third of unemployed workers currently receive assistance under the UI program, and that assistance falls short of the original goal of replacing at least half of previous earnings. In addition, the system provides no assistance either to the self-employed or to those who become reemployed at lower wages. In this paper we propose three broad reforms, each designed to help the UI system better meet the needs of a twenty-first century workforce. First, we propose strengthening the federal role in UI by setting federal standards that would aim to raise average national benefit levels and average national recipiency rates. Expansion in the program would be financed by raising the FUTA taxable wage base over time to 45,000 to for inflation over recent decades. Second, we propose a wage-loss insurance program, as part of the UI program, to provide an earnings supplement for those workers who become reemployed at a wage lower than the wage they earned at their previous job. Finally, we propose allowing self-employed workers, and perhaps others, to contribute up to 0.25 percent of annual income, up to 200 per year, into Personal Unemployment Accounts (PUAs). These contributions would be matched by the federal government and could be withdrawn later to cushion severe income losses or to finance training or job research"--P. 2.

Author : W. Lee Hansen
Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
Page : 506 pages
File Size : 33,67 MB
Release : 1989-12-31
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780299123543

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Modeled after Wisconsin's own unemployment compensation plan in the 1930s, federal unemployment insurance has long been considered one of the most important public policy achievements of the New Deal. Always paying benefits according to legislative and administrative guidelines and never requiring a taxpayer bailout, the program has nonetheless undergone strains induced by structural changes in both the economy and the prevailing political milieu. An outgrowth of a conference to celebrate the program's fiftieth anniversary, the papers collected in this volume describe the history of the program, analyze the strains it has undergone and that it faces in the 1990s, delineate the source of current debates over unemployment compensation, and offer suggestions for the future of the program.

Author : Stephen A. Wandner
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 31,44 MB
Release : 2023
Category : Unemployed
ISBN : 9780880996914

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"This book proposes options and recommendations for comprehensive reform of the unemployment insurance program that was initiated as a social insurance program by the Social Security Act of 1935. It documents the development of the program and its decline since the 1970s. Reform proposals and recommendations are synthesized from reforms suggested by policy analysts and researchers over many decades"--