New York Extends Benefits for Jobless

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Published: July 15, 2008

New York State began notifying out-of-work residents on Monday that they may be eligible to collect an additional 13 weeks of unemployment checks. All told, the extended benefits could go to more than 250,000 New Yorkers, the state labor commissioner said on Monday.

The commissioner, M. Patricia Smith, said the Labor Department would send notices to residents who are eligible for an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits under an extension President Bush signed on June 30. Ms. Smith said 112,000 potential recipients, or about 43 percent of those eligible in the state, live in New York City.

Ms. Smith estimated that the additional checks would spur more than $850 million in spending — on rent, food and other necessities — in the state, over the course of the extension, which expires in March.

Some out-of-work New Yorkers, like Donna Faiella of Howard Beach, Queens, are not waiting to be invited to apply for more benefits.

Ms. Faiella, 51, an editor of television commercials, said she applied online Monday morning for the extended benefits and hoped to receive her first check by the end of the week. She is expecting to receive $405 a week, which is the maximum benefit in the state, with no taxes deducted.

She cashed the last of her 26 checks — the limit before the extension — in March and has been living off savings since then, she said.

“I’ve had zero income for a while,” Ms. Faiella said. “I can’t even find a $10-an-hour job doing anything full time.”

She said that after she was laid off by a big advertising agency last year, she stretched her 26 checks over 40 weeks because she was able to find freelance jobs along the way. She applied for a state training grant to help her adapt to the shift to digital production, which has made her skills in analog video less useful, but her application was denied, she said. Now she simply hopes to find full-time work before the additional 13 checks run out.

Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, said the need for the extension was especially high in New York. On average, New York beneficiaries collect unemployment for about 17 weeks, longer than all but five states, he said.

“New York historically has been one of the hardest places to find work,” Mr. Stettner said. Referring to the May increase in the state’s unemployment rate to 5.5 percent, she said, “It’s a time when we need to give people that additional time looking for work.”

The National Employment Law Project estimated that 61,000 New York State residents had used up their unemployment benefits since November 2006 and remained out of work. The project, which advocates for the jobless, estimated that an additional 172,000 New Yorkers would have exhausted their benefits by March 2009 without the extension. The State Labor Department estimated that slightly more people, 259,000, would be eligible. Only California has more people potentially eligible for the extended benefits, about 645,000, according to the project’s figures.

Some states have indexed the amount of unemployment benefits they pay to the inflation rate, but New York has not increased its maximum benefit in about a decade, Ms. Smith said.

The top weekly benefit in New Jersey is now $560, more than one-third higher than New York’s. Connecticut’s top rate, $501 a week, is 24 percent higher than New York’s.

Nonetheless, unemployed city residents were happy to hear that their benefits could last more than half a year.

“It takes a bit of the stress off,” said Patrick Alexander, who was laid off as a maintenance worker at Columbia University in May.

Mr. Alexander, 35, who lives in Harlem, said he was considering a move to Arizona, where, he has heard, the job market is stronger.

“Before, you could work and come home and have a position,” Mr. Alexander said. “Now it’s like you never know. You might not have a job today or tomorrow.”

Jason Grant contributed reporting.