Expiring Unemployment Insurance Provisions

Katelin P. Isaacs
Analyst in Income Security

Several key provisions related to extended federal unemployment benefits are temporary and, therefore, scheduled to expire.

The temporary 100% federal financing of the Extended Benefit (EB) program ends January 4, 2012.

The temporary option for states to use three-year lookbacks as part of their EB triggers expires the week ending on or before December 31, 2011.

Authorization for the temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC08) program is scheduled to expire the week ending on or before January 3, 2012 (i.e., December 31, 2011, in all states except New York State, in which the program ends January 1, 2012).

Once these federal unemployment provisions expire, only regular, state-financed unemployment benefits from the Unemployment Compensation (UC) program will generally be available. In most states, UC provides up to 26 weeks of benefits.

This report describes the consequences of these expirations for the financing and availability of unemployment benefits in states. It also summarizes proposals to extend these expiring provisions, including the President’s American Jobs Act of 2011 proposal (introduced in Congress as S. 1549, H.R. 12, and S. 1660); H.R. 3346; S. 1804; and S. 1885.


Date of Report: December 5, 2011
Number of Pages: 7
Order Number: R41508
Price: $19.95

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