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August 2, 2008Weathering Job Loss : Unemployment Insurance |
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From Urban Institute: A majority of workers in these jobs do not have access to the temporary income of unemployment insurance to tide them over when they suffer a job loss. Most low-income families with children are headed by parents who work. Few of these families have enough assets to tide them over in hard times, and many lack access to unemployment insurance or other cash assistance programs. In 2006, an estimated 4.9 million or 6.4 percent of all U.S. families had an adult member who was unemployed (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2007). Low-income families with children are more likely to have unemployed members. Over one-fifth of the families weathering unemployment went through two or more spells within a year. In many of these families, breadwinners who work less than full time, year-round do so either because they are mixing work and such other responsibilities as childrearing or because they cannot find steady full-time work the entire year. While nearly three-quarters of all married-couple families with children in 2006 had more than one worker contributing to household income, less than half of families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level did.
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