Time running out for extended jobless benefits

June Johnson relied on unemployment checks to keep her life together over the course of the year, using the money to pay bills, buy groceries and support her daughter while she and her husband hunted for work.

Johnson is employable. She hands out five resumes a week and earned a real estate license last winter. But she became trapped in the region's moribund job market when she moved from Aberdeen to Duvall last year, drawn by the promise of steady road crew work for her husband.

The work dried up, forcing the family of three to rely on unemployment insurance checks.

But the federal unemployment insurance program is scheduled to expire Dec. 31, and lawmakers are scrambling to renew the aid. If Congress doesn't revise the program, thousands of Washington residents like Johnson could lose access to special extended benefits, offered to states with high unemployment.

"They don't need to be cutting people off when they are trying really hard. People get unemployment because they work. They aren't deadbeats," said Johnson, 48, who can still rely on her husband's benefits and his periodic work as a flagger.

Lawmakers are running out of time. With the program set to expire, Congress is under pressure to act before it adjourns for the year later this week.

Prodded by a largely jobless economic recovery, lawmakers are expected to eventually extend the federal program.

The question is how.

Thanks to its prolonged economic downturn, Washington qualifies for more unemployment aid, known as extended benefits. Typically, the program grants qualified residents an extra seven weeks of assistance, according to a state official.

The help is triggered by a formula designed to prove a state is stuck with a poor job market that is getting worse.

The problem is Washington employment is stagnant but may no longer be deteriorating enough to qualify, congressional aides say.

Not surprisingly, Washington lawmakers are rushing to renew and revise the federal program. Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, along with Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott, are reviewing ways to alter the trigger to keep extended benefits flowing in the Pacific Northwest.

"Our people probably need the benefits more than anybody else. (It's) just a quirk in the way the law was written," McDermott said last week.

The extended program assisted 6,213 Washington residents the last week of October. If Congress doesn't alter that program, the last checks could go out the first week of January, according to Bob Wagner, who manages unemployment insurance research and analysis at the state's Employment Security Department.

Overall, more than 47,000 Washington residents relied on the extra aid from June 2002 to June 2003, according to the National Employment Law Project.

No one knows for sure whether extended benefits will disappear, though. That's because Wagner's prediction is based on forecasts of the direction of the Washington unemployment rate, currently 7.6 percent. The state will know its fate in the middle of December.

Meanwhile, people like June Johnson wait. The former customer service representative can apply for extended benefits after her current benefits, worth $199 a week, run out Dec. 27. If the program stops, Johnson says, her family will have to find a smaller home.

It would be yet another sacrifice for a husband and wife who earned $36 an hour and $9.50 an hour respectively only two years ago.

They already canceled their health care coverage, leaving only their daughter on the policy, and make trips to a local food bank.

Health care, "that's a luxury," Johnson said.

They are not alone. The state jobless rate remains the third highest in the nation, trailing only Oregon and Alaska. The Washington economy created virtually no new jobs last year, according to recent data.

"This is the hardest time I have had looking for work in my life," Johnson said.

Nationwide, three out of four displaced workers exhaust their unemployment benefits before they land new jobs, according to the National Employment Law Project.

On Capitol Hill, Murray and Cantwell unsuccessfully pushed for action last week.

However, legislators often wait until the final days, or hours, of a congressional session to renew these kinds of laws.

In the House, Republican Rep. Jennifer Dunn is taking a more straightforward approach that would extend the federal program though June 30, 2004. She wants to ensure that aid continues though the holidays, while leaving open the possibility of reviewing the trigger for extended benefits.

"Last year we didn't do the (extension) until after we got back in January. We made people worry over the holidays," Dunn said last week.

Johnson would prefer to avoid the whole issue by landing a new job.

"There has got to be work out there."

P-I reporter Paul Nyhan can be reached at 206-448-8145 or paulnyhan@seattlepi.com

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