Minnesota County-By-County Breakdown Shows the Harm of Not Extending Unemployment Insurance

If Congress fails to extend the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program more than 9,200 people in Minnesota will lose their insurance coverage immediately on Dec. 28 or within the first week of the new year, according to new estimates from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. An additional 33,900 people in Minnesota will lose their coverage in the first six months of 2014 if Republicans continue to block an extension of the program, according to Department of Labor estimates.

The state estimates that 9,231 people will lose coverage either on Dec. 28 or within the next week. That includes people currently on the federal program and those who will exhaust their state benefits the week of Dec. 28 and would be unable to gain access to the federal program. A county-by-county breakdown is below.

Federal unemployment insurance took effect in 2008 and has been reauthorized several times since as Americans continue to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Despite the real progress the economy has made since its near collapse in 2008, there are still 1.3 million fewer jobs than there were before the recession began and long-term unemployment as a percentage of the unemployed is 37 percent, near historic highs.

Failure to extend federal unemployment insurance would also hurt job growth throughout the nation, costing the economy 240,000 jobs, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The CEA estimates that in Minnesota alone, failing to extend the program will cost 1,078 jobs.