Market Finance Time

Unemployment Nations

March 1, 2009

According ABCnews last week, the number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment claims jumped to 626,000, a 26-year high, bringing the total number of Americans receiving unemployment insurance to nearly 4.8 million.

“The safety net is being tested in ways that it has not been in more than a generation and there may have to be even more done to shore up [the] U.S. safety net going forward,” said Andrew Stettner, the deputy director of the National Employment Law Project.

Unemployment pay can help laid off workers avoid poverty, Stettner said, but with the average weekly benefit hovering around $300, many are still just “treading water.”

UK unemployment was 1.92 million between September and November, up 131,000 from the previous three months, the highest level since September 1997. German unemployment jumped more than expected to 8.3 percent in January 2009. The number of unemployed people in France jumped at its historic high, 90200 in January.

Entry Filed under: Job. .