Report dated October 15, 2011 reflects our unemployment numbers for week-ending October 08, 2011. During this week, 2,045 initial claims were filed in Utah compared to 2,453 the prior week.
EUC08 refers to the federally-funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation program that began in July 2008 as a result of the economic downturn (further info available with UIPL 23-08 and UIPL 04-10). To qualify for EUC benefits, you must have exhausted all available options for state-funded UI. Utah currently offers three tiers of the extension and you must exhaust one in order to move on to the next. The first tier is 50% of your original benefit amount; the second tier is 54% of your original benefit amount; the third tier is 50% of your original benefit amount. Altogether, the three tiers equal 184% of your original benefit amount. So, if you qualified for the maximum benefit of $451 per week for 26 weeks on the regular UI claim, all three tiers of the extension would calculate to $451 per week for an additional 47 weeks and a total of 73 weeks. Other states offer more tiers because of their higher unemployment rates.
The American Jobs Act has brought up the possibility of extending the EUC program for an additional year. As of today, you cannot file a new EUC claim or move on to the next tier after December 2011. If you exhaust Tier 2 in mid-December, you would automatically qualify for Tier 3. If you exhaust Tier 2 in mid-January, unfortunately, there are no further benefits available on that claim. If the legislation is passed, this December 2011 deadline would change. However, no additional tiers would be available with the current verbiage in the bill.
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The attached chart shows the impact of these deadlines on continued weeks claimed. The deadline to file for new or additional tiers of EUC previously expired in May 2010 and was not extended until July 2010, at which time the extension was retroactively applied. This is demonstrated on the graph by our most recent bump in continued weeks claimed. Since then, we have seen a steady decrease in the number of weeks filed, which could be attributed to a variety of factors, including people exhausting their benefits or people returning to work.
The numbers listed below are based on the 4-week moving average.
- 1,991 initial UI claims filed (increase of 39 from the prior week and decrease of 500 from same week in 2010)
- 17,706 continued UI weeks claimed (decrease of 121 from the prior week and decrease of 4,995 from same week in 2010)
- 12,322 continued EUC08 weeks claimed (decrease of 62 from the prior week and decrease of 8,264 from same week in 2010)
