CBPP Conference Call Media Briefing Dec. 18: 'Has Labor Market Improved So Much that Federal Jobless Benefits Should End?'

12/16/2003

From: Toni Kayatin of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 202-408-1080 or kayatin@cbpp.org Register on-line: http://www.cbpp.org/confcall.htm

News Advisory:

Event:

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities will hold a conference call media briefing Thursday, Dec. 18, at 11 a.m. (ET)

Topic:

"Has the Labor Market Improved so much that Federal Jobless Benefits Should End?"

Participants:

-- Alan Blinder, professor of economics, Princeton; former deputy chair of the Federal Reserve;

-- Lawrence Katz, professor of economics, Harvard; former chief economist of the U.S. Labor Department;

-- Isaac Shapiro, Senior Fellow, CBPP

Details:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will hold a conference call briefing on Thursday, Dec. 18, at 11 a.m. (ET) to discuss whether conditions in the U.S. labor market warrant ending the Temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation program (TEUC). Congress did not extend the TEUC program before adjourning, and workers who exhaust their regular, state-funded unemployment benefits starting the week of Dec. 21 will be ineligible for TEUC benefits. Republican Congressional leaders, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, have said that recent improvements in the economy mean the program is no longer needed. The White House has declined to take a position.

The briefing will feature two of the nation's leading experts on labor markets and economic policy: Alan Blinder, professor of economics at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve; and Lawrence Katz, professor of economics at Harvard and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal took Professor's Katz's research out of context to justify ending the TEUC program.

In conjunction with the briefing, the Center will issue a new study by Isaac Shapiro that examines the latest data on the job market. The analysis finds that labor market conditions, especially those affecting the long-term unemployed, remain weak enough to merit continuation of TEUC. The analysis, which features new state-by-state data on the number of people who will run out of regular unemployment benefits and receive neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, notes that there are 2.4 million fewer jobs now than when the economic downturn began, that about 80,000 to 90,000 jobless workers are running out of regular unemployment benefits each week, and that the long-term unemployed make up a larger share of the unemployed today than at any time since July 1983.

The new analysis will be posted to the Center's website at http://www.cbpp.org.

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To participate, register by e-mailing kayatin@cbpp.org, or calling Toni Kayatin at 202-408-1080, or register on-line at http://www.cbpp.org/confcall.htm.

Registrants should provide the following information to join the conference call on Thursday, Dec. 18 at 11 a.m. (ET):

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