Michael Thurmond: Stop playing politics with unemployed

Ledger- Enquirer:

Michael Thurmond, the elected official tasked with helping unemployed Georgians find work and offering economic assistance to those who can’t, says he is tired of politics as usual.

“It’s very distressing,” the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Labor said in a recent interview. “It’s sad and frustrating that the fate — at least the economic fate — of millions of Americans has been transformed into a political football that’s kicked around on almost a continuing basis.”

Thurmond was referring to a temporary fix passed earlier this month by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama, providing jobless compensation relief to more than 11 million people nationwide. However, the one-month extension, until April 5, came after previous funding expired on the emergency benefits.

Nearly 200,000 Georgians are receiving emergency unemployment paychecks, some of whom are on their fourth and fifth extensions. In Columbus, the number of unemployed people reached 13,377 in January, the latest statistics from the labor department.

The U.S. Senate last week passed a long-term extension of jobless benefits and a health care premium subsidy for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act or COBRA. But the U.S. House of Representatives will likely offer up its own measure before the two bodies reach a final agreement.

Thurmond expects that a vote for a long-term extension will once again come at the last minute. But that’s not the primary issue. He said the critical element is to somehow generate more jobs across the nation, which would cure many ills.

“To simply extend the benefits without having an equally significant effort to get people back to work and to help create jobs in the private sector, it’s a hollow type of answer,” he said.

More jobs should begin to materialize in Georgia as early as the second quarter of this year, said Jeff Humphries, an economist and director of the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth.

“But, unfortunately, that job growth, I think, is going to be too small overall to outweigh, or completely offset, the growth in the number of people looking (for work),” he said. “That’s why the unemployment rate is going to keep on rising even after we start to see some job growth.”

Georgia’s jobless rate in January was 10.4 percent, compared to a U.S. rate of 9.7 percent. Columbus jumped from 9.4 percent in December to 10.4 percent in January.

Humphries sees the state topping 11 percent or possibly going higher before peaking in 2011.

“The big thing that’s going to hold us back from bringing down that unemployment rate quickly is continued job losses in state and local government, and in construction,” the economist said. “Those three sectors are going to offset a lot of the good news.”

But there are nuggets of hope to be found. One is that layoffs in Georgia appear to be slowing.

A year ago, employers across the state shed a total of 23,350 workers in mass cuts reported to the labor department. That’s an average of nearly 2,000 per month.

Through Friday, about 1,080 mass layoffs were reported to the department, an average of 108 per week or roughly 430 per month so far.

There’s also anecdotal progress, which can be found in an upcoming Career Expo being held at Fort Benning by CivilianJobs.com, a Bradley-Morris Inc. online site that helps military people find jobs after serving their country.

The March 25 event has more than 30 employers and agencies attending, said Vicki Washington, senior career expo coordinator. Some of the company’s job fairs this year are drawing 40 to 45 employers, she said.

“A year ago, we had about half the number of companies participate at the event we’re at now,” said Washington, a retired U.S. Army sergeant major.

“This year, not only are the attendance numbers up but the employers with vacancies are up. Even though the economy’s recovering, there are jobs to be had, and lots of them.”

Such a paycheck-generating scenario would be music to Thurmond’s ears and ease the pressure on his staff around the state as it works to assist those out of work and in dire straits financially.

It also would be good for the Georgia Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, which has been under the gun since December, when its balance plunged to $25 million because of the massive number of layoffs in the state.

Thurmond said his agency has raised unemployment insurance premiums modestly on companies that pay into the fund.

But, like 29 other states and U.S. territories, the department also took advantage of interest-free advances from the federal government to keep checks flowing to jobless individuals.

The state, however, has been eating through the federal money. As of March 10, it had received $270 million since December. But the fund balance now is just over $18 million.

Employer premiums due by the end of March should give the fund a short-term boost.

“We would have to pay it back through premium collections,” Thurmond said of the federal advances. “We expect within 24 months we will be able to pay back what we are borrowing. That’s assuming we get a rebound in the economy and new job creation.”

Again, it will take more businesses starting up and existing companies expanding to infuse the trust fund.

“It’s really the new jobs that are created,” he said. “The new employers are the ones that really make the significant contributions to keep the fund solvent.”

Posted via email from Jim Nichols for GA State House