U.S. News: Jobless Aid Shrinks Unevenly --- Benefit Cuts Hit Some Struggling States as Unemployment System Shows Strains
Workers across the country are seeing the length of their jobless benefits pared back, a shakeout that is playing out unevenly and pinching people in states still struggling with unemployment above the national average.</br></br>The changes in benefits are partly the result of an improving job market but are also due to budget pressures at the state and federal level.</br></br>In Michigan, one of the states hardest-hit by the economic downturn and where unemployment remains close to 9%, job seekers will soon receive less than a year of benefits for the first time since the recession hit in 2007.</br></br>Michigan, which like many states offered 99 weeks of state and federally funded benefits at the peak of its jobs crisis, will become the 19th state to offer less than a year of payments to new claimants for jobless benefits. Nine other states offer more than a year but less than 60 weeks. More changes are coming: North Carolina recently passed a law that will cut benefits to 20 weeks starting in July.</br></br>John Rowloff, a single father of two teenagers in Monroe, Mich., got the last of his unemployment checks earlier this year but says he has seen little improvement in the local labor market even as the state's official jobless rate has fallen to 8.9% from as high as 14.2% in 2009.