39,500 Georgians Expected to Lose Long-Term Unemployment Benefits

“I’ve had very few interviews,” says Woodham, who adds she’s never been unemployed before now. “The ones I had were good, but a lot of them were just part time. Not a lot of callbacks.”

In the meantime, Woodham says she’s been relying on extended unemployment aid and her husband’s social security paycheck, but without her unemployment benefits, it won’t be enough to pay their bills.

“I have a car payment. I have insurance I have to pay, phone bills, a mortgage to pay, and it just doesn’t meet it,” Woodham said.

Woodham is one of more than 1.3 million people nationally and 39,500 Georgians who are about to lose their emergency unemployment insurance benefits, as estimated by the state Department of Labor.

For the state’s long-term unemployed, meaning anyone who’s been out of a job for between 18 and 47 weeks, their benefits are set to end Saturday. That’s unless Congress passes an emergency extension of that aid, which is set to expire as part of the across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, that go into effect at the beginning of the year.

The budget plan passed by the Senate last week that funds the government through 2015 did not include a one-year funding extension of the emergency unemployment benefits, which the Congressional Budget Office would cost $25 billion.  

“It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be tough for a lot of people. It’s not like people are sitting out there not looking,” says Woodham.

Davis Hawkins, who was working on contract as a military police officer in Washington state, says he hasn’t had much luck finding a job either since that contract expired in April.

“I was a little shocked because, you know, that’s not something that would happen. Just a little setback, but, you know,” Hawkins says.  

Hawkins says he moved home to Georgia to find a job and is still optimistic he can find one soon.

Viki Staley of Kennesaw headed the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust before her position was cut in June. She says she’s single and needs her unemployment benefits to take care of her 82-year-old mother.

“Panic is not what’s going to be effective, obviously, but there is a true sense of despair,” Staley says..

She says she has a temporary part-time job lined up, but it won’t be enough to cover all her expenses.

“We’re just really stuck.”