Unemployment Insurance

The length of time out-of-work Marylanders can collect unemployment insurance payments will be cut by 10 weeks, the state announced yesterday.Beginning Monday, anyone who exhausts the regular 26 weeks of unemployment insurance payments and applies for a second round of checks will receive payments for only 10 weeks, for a total of 36, the state's Department of Economic and Employment Development announced.People who exhausted their regular benefits by July 3 and apply for extensions today will be eligible to receive checks for the next 20 weeks, for a total of 46 weeks, said Charles O. Middlebrooks, associate secretary for employment and training at DEED.

ANNAPOLIS -- The General Assembly has agreed to impose $61 million in additional unemployment insurance taxes on Maryland businesses this year in a "pay-me-now or pay-me-later" reform.Identical House and Senate bills aimed at making the unemployment tax system more responsive to changing employment conditions moved toward the governor's office this week.Yesterday, delegates approved the Senate version of the legislation, sponsored at the request of the state Department of Economic and Employment Development.

TIP 20 If you lose your job, file for benefits as soon as possible If you lose your job, you may be eligible for unemployment benefits. Last month, Maryland's unemployment rate jumped to a 15-year high of 5.8 percent. File for jobless benefits as quickly as possible so that the state can determine your eligibility, says Thomas Wendel, executive director for Maryland's office of unemployment insurance. You can file by phone or online. "If you've been fired, or you quit, or it's a lack of work, we will try to determine whether under the law we could pay benefits or not," Wendel said, noting each case is unique.

Beware of outside websites claiming they want to help you file for unemployment benefits. The Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing & Regulation's unemployment insurance division warns these sites can collect personal information about you and possibly leave you open to identity theft. The state named one of the sites, Unemployment Help Center, in a press release. The only way to apply for unemployment benefits, the state says, is directly through the state's unemployment insurance division's website or by calling its office at 410-949-0022 or 800-827-4839.

ANNAPOLIS -- Man bit dog yesterday: Business called for higher taxes.At a hearing before a House committee, representatives of thousands of Maryland businesses endorsed a Schaefer administration plan to raise immediately $61 million in unemployment insurance taxes.But despite a strong show of support from the state chamber of commerce and other groups, there was dissension. Bethlehem Steel Corp. warned that the proposed changes would be "catastrophic to the economy," particularly a plan to raise the amount of payroll on which unemployment insurance taxes are levied.

ANNAPOLIS -- To address an annual shortfall of about $36 million, the state recommended yesterday that unemployment insurance taxes be increased by 0.2 percent a year, or $14 per employee, for all employers.The maximum tax rate was scheduled to rise from 6.0 percent to 6.5 percent July 1. So the new proposal, if approved by the General Assembly, would increase the top rate to 6.7 percent, or $469 per employee each year.Companies are taxed on the first $7,000 of each employee's salary, and the tax rate is based on the amount of employee turnover.

ANNAPOLIS -- Man bit dog yesterday: Business called for higher taxes.At a hearing before a House committee, representatives of thousands of Maryland businesses endorsed a Schaefer administration plan to raise an immediate $61 million in unemployment insurance taxes.But despite a strong show of support from the state chamber of commerce and other groups, there was dissension. Bethlehem Steel Corp. warned that the proposed changes would be "catastrophic to the economy," particularly a plan to raise the amount of payroll on which unemployment insurance taxes are levied.

A worsening economy and rising unemployment have led to what state officials expect will be the first across-the-board rise in unemployment insurance taxes in five years.State officials also said they are considering changes to the unemployment tax system that would make it more equitable. One choice could be to make the companies that lay off more workers pay a higher share of the cost of jobless benefits than they already do.Charles O. Middlebrooks, an assistant secretary of the Department of Economic and Employment Development, said his office is still weighing the options and wants to consult further with business groups.

A routine traffic stop by a police officer in Georgia led authorities in Maryland to a suspected identity theft scheme in which state unemployment benefits totaling $170,000 were falsely obtained in the names of dozens of unwitting people. None of the people for whom the benefits were paid out was unemployed, and none knew that someone had applied for the money using their identities, according to federal law enforcement officials assigned to a financial crime task force. The Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced indictments Thursday charging Vivek Jain, 25, of Gaithersburg and Amiee Arora, 31, of Washington with aggravated identity theft and mail fraud.

As unemployment rates climb to their highest levels in over three years, jobless Americans no longer have the same safeguards that were available during previous recessions. The maximum 26 weeks of unemployment benefits is the least in 20 years; the 34 percent of jobless workers collecting benefits a sharp decline from 69 per cent in 1975. Even if this is not the big crash some believe is inevitable within the next decade, this country's only safety net for the jobless -- the unemployment insurance system -- is full of gaping holes.