Benefits No Longer Paid To Majority of Jobless: Gaps Have Grown Since Mid-'70s Recession
Almost two-thirds of the country's unemployed receive no unemployment compensation benefits, largely because they have exhausted their 26-week allotment or because of cutbacks by the^Reagan administration and the states.</br></br>The shrinking proportion of benefit recipients, a dramatic change over the last decade, indicates that despite a shrinking unemployment rateÛÓ7 percent in AugustÛÓthe number of hard-core long-term unemployed remains high.</br></br>According to federal statistics and unemployment specialists, the gaps in the unemployment compensation system have grown significantly since the 1975-76 recession, when more than 65 percent of the jobless received benefits for up to 65 weeks.</br></br>A fairly steady decline in unemployment insurance coverageÛÓand the virtual dismantling of extended benefit programsÛÓhave left only 34 percent of the unemployed collecting benefits.</br></br>Of the 8.1 million unemployed in August, 2.4 million were collecting benefits averaging $120.60 per week from the state unemployment systems, according to the Labor Department. More than 2.5 million jobless have exhausted benefits in the past year, according to the department, while the remainder include new entrants and re-entrants to the work force who are ineligible and others disqualified by the stricter eligibility requirements imposed by more than 40 states since 1980.