30,000 Iowans at risk of losing unemployment

A new report says 30,000 Iowans are at risk of exhausting their unemployment benefits early next year if Congress doesn't renew the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act quickly.

The report released by three groups on Monday show that 10,000 Iowans will exhaust their regular state unemployment benefits in the first quarter of 2010, and another 20,000 who are on one of the three levels of federal extensions will not be allowed to continue in the program. Those numbers total about one-fourth of all unemployed Iowans.

The report was released by the National Employment Law Project, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Half in Ten Campaign.

Iowa Workforce Development Deputy Director Joe Walsh joined the group in calling for the extension.

The report emphasized that state agencies that process jobless benefits have been overwhelmed by the record volume of calls. If the extended unemployment are allowed to expire, it says they will have to notify recipients of the interruption and adapt to new benefits programming and processing delays.

Joe Walsh, deputy director of Iowa Workforce Development, joined the groups in calling for the extension.

“The unemployment crisis will not disappear simply because we move into 2010,” said Walsh in a prepared statement.

Along with the extended unemployment benefits, unemployed families also stand to lose a $25 weekly boost in unemployment benefits and a provision suspending the federal income tax on the first $2,400 in jobless benefits.

Nationwide, the groups said 1 million American workers would be left without access to benefits in January, a number that would swell to more than 3 million by March.

About 113,000 Iowans were unemployed in October, according to Iowa Workforce Development. The state's unemployment rate of 6.7 percent had risen 2.4 percent in the previous year.

Iowa's November unemployment rate is scheduled for release on Dec. 18.