The current extension allows for an additional 37 weeks on top of the 26 or so that your state provides, bringing the entire time you can stay on unemployement to 63 weeks, or 15 months.
That's about a year and three months to find a new job. 450 days.
People piss me off. This money isn't free.
Employers get hit with that increase to fund the extension. It gets added to FUI (Fed Unemployment Insurance) and SUI (State) as a tax on their total payroll. Since the recession started, I'm coughing up an extra 2.5 percent in tax between FUI and my state SUI.
For you lurking DUers who would like to accuse me of whining over a measly 2.5 percent...that's ON TOP of what I already was paying in Unemployment tax on my payroll--and that's on my TOTAL annual payroll, which happens to be about $80K for the past $#&^! FIVE YEARS.
That's roughly an extra 2 thousand dollars a year, times 5, for a whopping $10,000 in extra tax I've paid to help fund loafers who can't find a job in almost a year and a half.
You can be damn sure it's played a part in my decision to hire any new people, since I want to be sure I keep them and don't have to lay them off and send our Unemployment tax into the stratosphere. WHOOPS! Looks like there's a direct correlation between extending unemployment benefits and hiring. Who would've thunk it!!!