Only a quarter of jobless Americans now receive jobless benefits, the smallest ration in half a century.
The number of unemployed Americans receiving benefits is at a record low since World War II, according to data from the US Department of Labor.
On Saturday, 1.3 million Americans lost their unemployment benefits after Congress failed to extend an emergency federal program under which jobless American workers received unemployment insurance payments.
According to data compiled by House Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, the number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits is the lowest since the US Department of Labor began keeping records in 1946, The Huffington Post reported.
Before December 28, 38 percent of unemployed Americans received unemployment insurance through their state or federal government. But now, as the program has expired, only a quarter of jobless Americans receive the benefits, the lowest rate in over half a century.
The program provided jobless Americans looking for work with up to 47 weeks of supplemental unemployment insurance payments.
If the unemployment insurance is not extended, according to the data, US citizens will continue to lose their benefits at a rapid pace; 72,000 Americans a week.
The unemployment benefit cuts are expected to cut job growth by about 300,000 positions next year and push hundreds of thousands of Americans toward poverty.
Å“In a year in which thereâ„¢s a lot of talk about the need to focus on equity and inequities in our economy, the loss of over a million benefits for the people just days ago and then up to five million in the year ahead is going to make that infinitely harder,” Imara Jones, economic justice contributor for Colorlines.com, told Democracy Now.
AN/ISH
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Source: Press TV