Lawmakers Strike Unemployment Compensation Deal
The compromise ensures that some 45,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians won’t lose their extended federal benefits next week. It will also save the unemployment compensation system about $114-million dollars a year. “It is the most extensive unemployment compensation reform package that we have seen – it’s the only unemployment compensation reform package we’ve seen – in ten years,” says House majority leader Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny). “There are significant reforms that are being brought to the table.”
Chairman of the House Labor & Industry Committee, Ron Miller (R-York), says they will freeze next year’s maximum weekly benefit at $573-dollars a week. “There will be a zero percent increase for next year, and then a five year sliding scale that will be one percent the year after, one point one the year after, that is the cap, it can’t go above that,” Miller says.
Other savings would come from a new requirement that unemployment compensation recipients actively search for work, and new rules concerning severance pay. The savings in the deal that was struck Wednesday evening are greater than the $60-million projected savings in the original Senate bill, but much less than the original House bill. The legislative process is on pace for Senate concurrence this Friday.
The statewide unemployment rate currently stands at 7.4%, according to data just released Thursday by the Department of Labor & Industry. It’s much lower than the national average, which remains above 9%, but Pennsylvania owes the federal government nearly $4-billion dollars it has borrowed to cover unemployment benefits during the recession.
