Options for Addressing Long-Term Unemployment as the Economy Recovers

The recent recession and its aftermath have once again demonstrated the importance of the unemployment insurance system as a vital part of the nation’s safety net. But some facets of the program are in need of repair, including the high rate at which recipients run out of regular benefits, even in a strong labor market. Since the mid-1970s, the exhaustion rate has increased by three to four percentage points per decade, after adjusting for cyclical variation and temporary benefit extensions. This brief, drawing on an extensive review of research on the secular rise in UI exhaustions and programs designed to reduce long-term unemployment, considers what federal and state policymakers could do to more effectively address this problem. The challenge to policymakers is to devise efficient ways of helping UI recipients become reemployed rapidly and, if necessary, supporting them while they search for new jobs. The author concludes that the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services program already in place provides a good framework for helping to ensure that UI benefits go to workers who comply with the rules and that claimants who need reemployment assistance can get it, but these programs are badly in need of strengthening. In particular, too few of the claimants likely to exhaust are being referred to employment-related services, especially intensive services such as retraining

The Secular Rise in Unemployment Insurance Exhaustions and What Can Be Done about It

Over the past several decades, the rate at which regular unemployment insurance recipients run out of benefits before they have found jobs, even in a strong labor market, has been gradually rising. For example, in 1973, 27.4 percent of UI recipients exhausted their benefits; in 2007 (with a similar unemployment rate) 35.6 percent exhausted. This paper documents the increase in the exhaustion rate, along with the parallel rise in long-term unemployment; examines the consequences; and reviews what has been learned about the efficacy of various approaches for reversing, or at least halting, the trend. The research on the rise in long-term unemployment and UI exhaustions suggests that, even after the labor market recovers from the recent recession, some UI recipients will have a difficult time finding a new job, while others will want to avoid going back to work as long as they can receive benefits. The dual challenge, then, is to ensure that 1) workers who could benefit from employment services received those services, and 2) UI recipients do not abuse the system by failing to actively search for work. The evaluations reviewed in this paper point the way to policies and programs that can meet that challenge. In particular, strengthening job search requirements and increasing job search assistance would address both goals; the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services program provides a good framework for these activities. In addition, evidence from experiments conducted in the 1980s suggests that financial inducements for unemployed workers to search for work more intensively or to accept job offers they might otherwise have rejected can also be effective. Finally, for individuals whose skills are no longer in demand, mixed results from the evaluations of public training programs underscore the importance of directing participants to courses that are appropriate for their interests and abilities and that match the needs of employers in their community

Recession and the Employment of Demographic Groups

macroeconomics, Recession, Demographic

Unemployment Insurance: Fix It and Fund It

During the 2020–2021 pandemic, the federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system in the United States nearly reached the breaking point. The surge in joblessness was matched in history only by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Congress hurriedly crafted temporary pandemic benefit assistance programs to fill benefit and eligibility gaps in state-run UI programs, handing them off to capacity-starved state UI agencies that fitfully served millions of workers and employers. After years of policy neglect and contraction, state UI programs have low benefit recipiency, meager earnings replacement rates, and inadequate benefit financing. It is time for comprehensive federal UI reform legislation, which should require state lawmakers to improve program access, benefit adequacy, financing, and reemployment services to meet the challenges of the new labor market. In this paper, the authors offer essential elements for practical UI program reform that includes explicit sharing of program costs between business and labor

Automated Circuit Diagnosis using First Order Logic Tools

While Numerous Diagnostic Expert Systems Have Been Successfully Developed in Recent Years, They Are Almost Uniformly based on Heuristic Reasoning Techniques (I.e., Shallow Knowledge) in the Form of Rules. This Paper Reports on an Automated Circuit Diagnostic Tool based on Reiter\u27s Theory of Diagnosis. in Particular, this is a Theory of Diagnosis based on Deep Knowledge (I.e., Knowledge based on Certain Design Information) and using First Order Logic as the Representation Language. the Inference Mechanism Which is Incorporated as Part of the Diagnostic Tool is a Refutation based Theorem Prover using Rewriting Systems for Boolean Algebra Developed by Hsiang. Consequently, the Diagnostic Reasoning Tool is Broadly based on Reiter\u27s Model but Incorporates Complete Sets of Reductions for Boolean Algebra to Reason over Equa-Tional Descriptions of the Circuits to Be Analyzed. the Refutational Theorem Prover Uses an Associative Commutative Identity Unification Algorithm Described by Hsiang but Requires Additional Focusing Techniques in Order to Be Appropriate for Diagnosing Circuits. a Prototype Version of the Mainline Diagnostic Program Has Been Developed and Has Been Successfully Demonstrated on Several Small but Nontrivial Combinational Circuit Examples

Cylindrical surface profile and diameter measuring tool and method

A tool is shown having a cross beam assembly made of beams joined by a center box structure. The assembly is adapted to be mounted by brackets to the outer end of a cylindrical case. The center box structure has a vertical shaft rotatably mounted therein and extending beneath the assembly. Secured to the vertical shaft is a radius arm which is adapted to rotate with the shaft. On the longer end of the radius arm is a measuring tip which contacts the cylindrical surface to be measured and which provides an electric signal representing the radius of the cylindrical surface from the center of rotation of the radius arm. An electric servomotor rotates the vertical shaft and an electronic resolver provides an electric signal representing the angle of rotation of the shaft. The electric signals are provided to a computer station which has software for its computer to calculate and print out the continuous circumference profile of the cylindrical surface, and give its true diameter and the deviations from the ideal circle

Use of waveform lidar and hyperspectral sensors to assess selected spatial and structural patterns associated with recent and repeat disturbance and the abundance of sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) in a temperate mixed hardwood and conifer forest.

Abstract Waveform lidar imagery was acquired on September 26, 1999 over the Bartlett Experimental Forest (BEF) in New Hampshire (USA) using NASA\u27s Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS). This flight occurred 20 months after an ice storm damaged millions of hectares of forestland in northeastern North America. Lidar measurements of the amplitude and intensity of ground energy returns appeared to readily detect areas of moderate to severe ice storm damage associated with the worst damage. Southern through eastern aspects on side slopes were particularly susceptible to higher levels of damage, in large part overlapping tracts of forest that had suffered the highest levels of wind damage from the 1938 hurricane and containing the highest levels of sugar maple basal area and biomass. The levels of sugar maple abundance were determined through analysis of the 1997 Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) high resolution spectral imagery and inventory of USFS Northern Research Station field plots. We found a relationship between field measurements of stem volume losses and the LVIS metric of mean canopy height (r2 = 0.66; root mean square errors = 5.7 m3/ha, p \u3c 0.0001) in areas that had been subjected to moderate-to-severe ice storm damage, accurately documenting the short-term outcome of a single disturbance event