In honor of Labor Day weekend, Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, offered this touching essay urging us to keep in mind “the millions of Americans who don’t have jobs, but who in many ways work harder than ever”  (click here to listen to the audio version):

On this Labor Day weekend, we might give some thought to what it’s like to be without a job.

About 1 in every 10 Americans — 15 million, the population of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago combined — doesn’t have a job. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are 3 million more who have just stopped looking for jobs after a year because they can’t find one.

Having no job does not mean having no work. Your children must still be fed, bathed and ferried to school, which is a lot of hard work. But you have less money for food, gas and the new shoes your children need for school.

It means that if you have a toothache, you might pretend it will go away, until it becomes a sharp pain. Then you have to see a dentist, but may not be able to buy a new winter coat. Read the rest of this entry »

A stark indicator of the extent of Oklahoma’s job losses over the past year is the state’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) Trust Fund account. Going into 2009, the Trust Fund enjoyed a very healthy balance of $824 million. Now, twelve months later, the balance has fallen by 40 percent to $489 million. In 2009, the OESC (Oklahoma Employment Security Commission) paid out $559 million in regular UI  benefits, an all-time record and almost four times the amount paid in 2007.

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This week we released the July edition of Numbers You Need, our monthly bulletin of key economic and budget trends.  The monthly report contained some glimmers of good news, as the state’s unemployment rate rose by a relatively modest 0.1 percentage point to 6.3 percent in May, while rising energy prices (of benefit to Oklahoma) contributed to a modest increase in the Consumer Price Index. However, if we step back and compare where we are now to our situation 12 months ago, we get a sense of the extent of the  economic downturn’s toll on the state’s economy and population. Compared to 12 months ago, we find (numbers compare May 2009 to May 2008, except where otherwise noted):

• 39,900 fewer Oklahomans employed;
• A 77 percent increase in the number of unemployed;
• More than three times as many Oklahomans receiving Unemployment Insurance benefits;
• Over 51,000 more people receiving food assistance (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps) benefits and almost 26,000 more people on Medicaid (April 2009 vs. April 2008);
• State General Revenue collections down 30 percent (June 2009 vs. June 2008)

The weak economy continues to place great strains on both our private and public safety net support systems.  Fortunately, the federal stimulus bill included increases in both Unemployment Insurance and food assistance benefits, as well as help for states to protect Medicaid health insurance coverage and avoid layoffs of teachers and other public sector employees. This  provides crucial help to families in need and keep dollars circulating through the economy at a time when state resources are declining.

We hope you’ll check out Numbers You Need and post a comment sharing your thoughts.

Across the nation, the deep, prolonged economic recession is putting great strains on state Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs. Oklahoma is hardly immune from these challenges, but our problems are less severe than elsewhere. The combination of having entered the recession with our UI program in good fiscal health, the relative mildness of the downturn in Oklahoma, and the Legislature’s willingness to do what needed to be done to get the boost of available federal stimulus dollars should help  allow the state’s UI program to continue to provide a temporary source of income until employment prospects improve.

As everyone knows, the June jobs report was brutal – the nation lost an additional 467,000 jobs, the unemployment rate reached 9.5 percent, and the total number of unemployed Americans hit 14.7 million, an all-time high. State-level figures for June have not yet been released, but May did bring relatively good news for Oklahoma, as the state’s 0.1 percent increase in the unemployment rate (from 6.2 percent to 6.3 percent) was far less severe than in prior months or in the nation as a whole. Still, the state saw its number of unemployed hit 111,700 for the month, an increase of nearly 50,000 compared to a year prior. The unemployment rate has now topped 7.5 percent in 19 counties, led by Hughes County, whose jobless rate reached 10.9 percent in May. The number of Oklahomans claiming Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits rose to just under 50,000 in May, a 208 percent increase compared to May 2008. Almost 10,000 long-term unemployed workers in the state who have already exhausted their initial period of UI eligibility have now become eligible for an additional 13 weeks of benefits.

Such developments are putting enormous stress on state unemployment insurance systems. Every state has an Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund which collects revenues and pays out benefits. When fewer workers are employed, states pay out more in benefits while taking in less in UI tax collections. Yet while Oklahoma’s Trust Fund balance has declined over the past year, we are in a much stronger situation than most states.

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Sunday’s issue of The Oklahoman featured a compelling report by Paula Burkes on the struggles of several Oklahomans who have unexpectedly found themselves among the ranks of the unemployed, losing long-time jobs and struggling to regain their footing in an extremely unforgiving labor market.  Each of the five profiled unemployed workers are struggling to keep themselves and their families afloat, while hoping that their job prospects improve quickly. In the case of Cindy Mason, who was laid-off four months ago after 29 years working for an Oklahoma City church, the change in circumstance has been abrupt and frightening:

“I’m scared spotless,” Mason, a homeowner, said. Given only two months’ severance, she pulled some money from her retirement account, canceled her YMCA membership and other nonessentials from her budget, is working a temporary job and looking like crazy for employment…

“I don’t want to lose my house, want to pay my bills and keep up my insurance,” she said.

The same day, The New York Times ran an opinion column by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of the 2001 memoir Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Ehrenreich revisits some of the low-wage workers and communities she profiled in her book and finds that, while the media has tended to focus on the emergence of the “nouveau poor” among those who were previously affluent before the recent economic collapse, for the “already poor” and the “always poor”, this recession has been especially tough.  She cites data showing that blue-collar unemployment is increasing three times as quickly as white-collar unemployment, which is pushing many people who were already scraping to get by during the good times right off the cliff of financial stability.

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Some other key findings from May’s edition:

• As the downturn deepens, participation in the Food Stamp program and Medicaid continues to grow, but fewer people are receiving TANF cash assistance benefits (see our blog entry “What if we threw a recession and no one showed up at the welfare office?“);
• The Consumer Price Index grew by a modest 0.3 percent in March in the South region, but was down 0.3 percent over the past 12 months;
• Bankruptcies in Oklahoma were up 23.0 percent in 2008 compared to 2007; and
• 56 percent of Oklahoma public school children were enrolled in the free- and reduced-meal program in 2008-09 (see our blog entry “Feeding the Children” for a full discussion).

Kudos to the Oklahoma Legislature and Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland for taking a small but worthwhile step in helping Oklahomans keep their health insurance. SB 553, authored by Sen. Ron Justice (R-Chickasha) in the Senate and sponsored by Rep. Leslie Osborn (R–Tuttle) of the House, expands the state’s “mini-COBRA” health insurance plan for the newly unemployed. The bill allows Oklahomans who have lost their jobs with small businesses to keep their health insurance for four months and receive a federal subsidy to help pay the premium. The bill has passed both houses and  is headed to Governor Brad Henry’s desk.

COBRA is a federal law that allows a person leaving a job to keep health insurance coverage through their former employer for up to 18 months, if the employee pays full monthly premiums plus an administrative charge. For those who can afford it, COBRA offers a way to keep the same insurance coverage while they seek other work or better insurance options. COBRA does not help all workers, however. Among other gaps, it applies only to firms with 20 or more employees.

Oklahoma and most other states created “mini-COBRA” laws to extend COBRA-like rights to employees of smaller firms. However, most mini-COBRAs are more restrictive than the federal one and Oklahoma’s is amongst the most restrictive of all. Employees are entitled to coverage for only one month after they leave a job.
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A new OK Policy issue brief looks at the federal stimulus funding that is being made available to states that adopt a number of modest reforms to their Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs. As the number of jobless workers claiming UI benefits rises rapidly, Oklahoma’s UI program may be approaching a situation, known as conditional factors,  that automatically triggers cuts in jobless benefits and increases in employer taxes to keep the state’s UI Trust Fund solvent. The stimulus bill would provide Oklahoma $75.9 million that could avert or minimize these tax hikes and benefit cuts, contingent on implementing some worthwhile changes to the UI program that Oklahoma has already largely enacted.

Read our four page brief or see this guide from the National Employment Law Project on the various provisions of the stimulus bill benefiting unemployed workers.

As we showed in the March edition of Numbers You Need, the number of laid-off Oklahomans receiving unemployment benefits is skyrocketing. An average of 4,881 workers filed first-time claims in January, an increase of 149 percent compared to September 2008. Continuing UI claims have increased by 80 percent over the same period, as the state’s unemployment rate jumped from 3.8 percent to 5.0 percent.

With more laid-off workers receiving UI benefits, the balance in the state’s  UI Trust Fund is starting to tumble. As you can see from the chart below, the UITF balance reached a peak in August 2008 and has been falling steadily since. Its current balance, $763 million, is a full $100 million less than in August. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oklahoman had an editorial today about the increase in the numbers of Oklahomans needing assistance to get by. Food stamp usage has reached an all time high in Oklahoma. It is a sobering editorial, but an issue that needs to be acknowledged. As I read the article, I couldn’t help but think of some of the people I spoke to during the homeless count, an event organized by the Oklahoma City Homeless Alliance. The Homeless Alliance does this process annually and the numbers will be out in a couple of weeks to show the statistical data that was collected that day and night. However, it isn’t the statistics that will stick with those of us who participated in the process. It is the real people and their stories that will stick with me. More than once that night, I spoke to people who were recently homeless – for the first time in their lives. The stories were similar. Loss of a job and mounting bills eventually lead to the need to receive assistance from the government through food stamps and then, eventually, to the loss of a home. I talked to one gentleman for a while who had only been homeless for a matter of days. He had never received assistance before this downturn. His voice and demeanor didn’t express great sorrow, or anger, or much of anything. He just seemed somewhat numb, as if he could hardly believe he had gotten to this point. He almost seemed apologetic. Read the rest of this entry »

Numbers You Need is a monthly publication from OK Policy that presents key data on the state’s economy, work force, human services, and budget in one concise easy-to-read fact sheet.

March’s edition of Numbers You Need provides further evidence of the deteriorating economic situation in Oklahoma. The state’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate hit 5.0 percent in January, up from 4.6 percent in December. Building permits issued in the final quarter of 2008 were down 44 percent compared to 2007, with the three month total representing the lowest level of activity since at least 1995. Meanwhile, state revenue collections in February fell steeply for the second straight month, coming in 21.6 percent below last year’s amount and 30.4 percent below the certified estimate.
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