unemployment benefits

Out of work and living on a $189-a-week unemployment check, Rob Linville needs to watch every penny. Lately, he has been watching too many pennies disappear into the coffers of the bank that administers his unemployment check via a prepaid debit card.

State unemployment insurance provides money to out-of-work adults, but for most people, those checks are hardly enough to cover the bills. Enter IncomeAssure, a supplemental unemployment insurance policy that lifts your benefit to 50% of your former income for 24 weeks. Is it a product you should consider?

As the eurozone sovereign debt crisis continues, focus is shifting to Italy as the next potential victim. But for worries closer to home, consider this: $37 billion in U.S. government benefits designed to help people through the downturn will expire by the end of 2011, leaving a hole twice that size in the economy.

For the nearly 14 million Americans who want to work and can't find jobs, unemployment insurance is a vital lifeline. But how much help that lifeline is varies widely from state to state. We crunched the numbers to see which states are the best -- and worst -- places to be unemployed.

As the jobless run out of unemployment benefits, many may be turning toward the Social Security Disability office hoping to find some relief. Officials report that initial claims are up from 2.5 million in fiscal year 2006 to 3.25 million in fiscal year 2010 -- a 30% jump during the recession. But...

Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, providing support for the view that there will be stronger job growth this year. Applications fell to a seasonally adjusted 385,000 last week, marking the third decline in the past four weeks, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Washington now spends that much more than it did a mere three years ago. But trying to figure out what we're getting for all that extra money is no simple matter. A lot of slicing and dicing does yield some answers -- none of which are very satisfying.

Goldman Sachs drew some undeserved ire when it recently pointed to proposed cuts in federal spending as a key near-term risk. While the proposed cuts are modest, they could still undermine the rebound at a critical time.

If 2010 was the year of joblessness, 2011 may become the year that that joblessness became intractable. Recently released Department of Labor stats paint a grim picture for the long-term unemployed. In a nutshell: Those out of work for five weeks have a monthly re-employment rate of 31%. For those...

If a compromise by definition is a deal that pleases no one, then the tax deal that cleared Congress Thursday was a rousing success: Conservatives and liberals both dislike it, but those who voted for it agreed that the alternative -- letting taxes rise for everyone -- would have been worse.