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The House Ways and Means Committee may move to consider new legislation (HR 3548), authored by Subcommittee Chairman Representative Jim McDermott, (D-WA) to increase individual eligibility for unemployment benefits by an additional 13 weeks in states where the unemployment rate has surged to more than 8.5 percent.

Lawmakers were previously considering a similar expansion of eligibility, but in the context of a bill (HR 3404) that would also renew the present structure of emergency unemployment benefits before it expires at the end of the year. Those benefits were expanded under the Recovery Act as illustrated below.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) has estimated 400,000 workers are expected to exhaust their emergency unemployment benefits this month and some economists predict the number might rise to 1.5 million by year's end. The U.S. Department of Labor has not provided exhaustion estimates.

Under the present benefits structure, all jobless workers are eligible for up to 46 weeks of Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC08), with jobless workers in states where the unemployment rate is 6 percent or more eligible for up to 59 weeks total. In states with the highest unemployment rates, claimants can receive as much as 79 weeks of benefits with the addition of Extended Benefits.

But renewing the EUC08 program will only assist the newly jobless -- and economists are concerned that in a climate where the fastest jobless growth has been among individuals who have been out of work for six months or more -- such an approach does not address the issue of those exhausting benefits.

Chairman McDermott initially proposed adding an additional 13 weeks of eligibility in states with unemployment rates of 9 percent or more as part of legislation to renew EUC08. The costs of those additional payments would be borne by the federal general revenues, which fully funds states for the cost of the EUC08 benefits.

But after the most recent jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate increasing to 9.7 percent, Chairman McDermott moved to separate the two efforts. On September 10 he released a plan to move forward with 13 extra weeks for jobless workers in high-unemployment states in advance of a general renewal which would not be needed until the end of the year. High-unemployment states are currently defined as having an unemployment rate exceeding 8.5 percent. They include 25 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.