Senate Republicans want to slash the number of weeks an individual can receive unemployment payments and tie the length of benefit availability to the unemployment rate, but critics say that even if jobs are plentiful, it can still be a long process to find a good one.
Currently, Arizonans who qualify for unemployment can receive up to 24 weeks of benefits when the unemployment rate is 5% or less. The proposal by Phoenix Republican Sen. Steve Kaiser would slash that time in half, to 12 weeks, if the previous quarter’s unemployment rate was 5% or less.
The measure, Senate Bill 1167, cleared the Arizona Senate on March 2 by a vote of 16-14, along party lines. It next moves to the House of Representatives for consideration.
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If it becomes law, the bill calls for incremental increases in the length of benefits, based on the previous quarter’s unemployment rate. It would add two weeks of payments for every half-percentage point increase in the unemployment rate until it reached 20 weeks for an unemployment rate of 8.5%.
Under existing law, those who qualify for unemployment payments can receive up to 26 weeks of benefits if the unemployment rate is greater than 5%. The unemployment rate in Arizona in December was 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“We have 10 open jobs for every one applicant,” Kaiser told senators on March 1 when the bill was debated. “We’ve got a massive labor participation problem. There are a...
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