November 5, 2009 Unemployment benefits extension aids RI Play video

(NECN: Peter Howe, Smithfield, R.I.) - Congress moved Thursday to extend by 14 to 20 weeks the maximum amount of time unemployed people can collect jobless benefits. President Obama's expected Friday morning to sign into law the measure, which will especially help Rhode Island, the New England state facing the highest unemployment.

It's been 26 years since Sandra Gaumont, 55, of Pawtucket was in college. But Thursday found her at a college government job fair at Bryant University, a measure of how far she'll go to find work after losing her job in June.

"It's been very difficult,'' Gaumont said of looking for work in a state with 13 percent unemployment. "I've spent a lot of time online -- because everything's online now -- just looking through a list of possible job opportunities.''

Sandra was laid off from a job she had had for 11 years working in college religious ministry. She's using state and federal tuition aid to take one class to refresh her original bachelor's degree in accounting. It's not an easy time. Because of a quirk in working for non-profit organizations, Sandra said she's paying over $600 a month in COBRA payments to keep her medical insurance.

But she says she's grateful to know how much worse it could be. "I'm starting my fifth month'' without work, "and I talk to people who've been out for a year or a year and a half and I'm like, yeah, O.K.'' -- an acknowledgement many have it much harder.

With more than 1 out of every

8 Rhode Islanders jobless, Congress has just moved decisively to try to help them and other New Englanders by extending again how long those unemployed can get benefits beyond the current 72 to 79 week maximum.

The latest move adds at least 14 more weeks of benefits, 20 weeks in states with over 8.5 percent unemployment. That list now includes Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and at 8.4 percent as of September, Connecticut is close and likely to become one of the states offering the maximum 20-week extension. The latest reported unemployment in New Hampshire was 7.2 percent, 6.7 percent in Vermont.

This is the fourth extension approved since June 2008. It will be funded by $2.4 billion in business unemployment insurance taxes that will be levied through June 2011. The 99-week maximum time period jobless people can collect benefits compared to a previous high of 65 weeks during the recession of the 1970s.

For job seekers in Rhode Island, it's especially hard times, says Sandra Gaumont, whose career includes working in cost accounting at a manufacturing plant and administering an art museum before her ministry work. "I find it's very hard to do transition skills in Rhode island, given our climate, where they talk about if you were doing one thing then you just use your skills and transition to another field. But I think it's a very hard climate to be doing that at this point.''

Extended unemployment benefits will ease the struggle for many New Englanders. But they can't compare to a growing economy -- and a job.