Stephen A. Wandner

The Unemployment Insurance (UI) program is an income support program that was established in 1935 as part of the social insurance safety net provided by the Social Security Act. The program pays temporary benefits to workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own. It also promotes economic stability by maintaining purchasing power. Federal law provides the framework under which State UI programs operate. State UI programs pay out benefits and collect taxes. States pay benefits to workers who are eligible for them under their own State UI laws. States also pay out benefits under Federal benefit programs that are responsible for unemployment compensation for Federal employees and ex-service members, trade adjustment assistance, and disaster unemployment assistance.

The UI program has a companion purpose: to help unemployed workers return to productive employment. Able-bodied UI beneficiaries are required to search for work, register for work, and receive reemployment services at one-stop career centers throughout the United States. In some States, they are required to participate in eligibility reviews that have a reemployment component. As permanent layoffs have become more prevalent and unemployment durations for UI beneficiaries increased in recent decades, helping the unemployed return to work has become more important. During this same period, three employment programs have emerged within the UI program that focus exclusively on the reemployment of UI beneficiaries: the Short-Time Compensation (STC) program, enacted in 1982; the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) program, enacted in 1993; and the Self-Employment Assistance (SEA) program, also enacted in 1993. These programs have become a part of Federal and State UI laws, and they operate within the UI program.

This excerpt is from an article published in the October 2008 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.

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Related BLS programs

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Related Monthly Labor Review articles

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