Some of you may have heard the term “The 99ers” being used to describe unemployed people who have used the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment benefits the government allows per person in this country. The previous high for number of weeks allowed for unemployment benefits was 55 weeks in the early 1980’s.
Many Americans have exhausted the 99 weeks of benefits during this recession. Many of these same people are asking for more, claiming the economy is so bad that they are unable to find employment in this time frame. The obvious question is whether or not 99 weeks is enough. That is almost two years of unemployment benefits. Many jobless people claim that they aren’t being hired for jobs they are over-qualified for.
If you were an executive before the recession and were forced to work at Walmart, would you do it? This is a deep issue that can be argued from many different perspectives. Each person in this country has a different situation that they live in and deal with on a daily basis. We are in the worst recession since the great depression. There are roughly 15,000,000 unemployed people in this country, battling for about 3,000,000 open jobs. The odds are obviously leaning quite heavily towards people remaining unemployed.
What do you think? Is 99 weeks an adequate amount of time to find a job in this economy? Take the poll on our home page!
Michael Denny
Interactive Resources
