Could you live on $430 a week in New York City? Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are finding out the hard way.
Nearly 200,000 New Yorkers have been laid off in the last year. The most they can collect in unemployment benefits is $430 a week – that's more than $100 less than what their fellow jobless in Boston, Pittsburgh or Trenton can accrue, according to the New York Times. Considering the exorbitant cost of living in New York, how can they do it?
The federal unemployment benefits system was intended to make up for about half the income a person made while they were working. Unlike other states, New York's unemployment system doesn't change to account for inflation every year. And many laid-off people such as 51-year-old Michael Sklar, a former senior systems analyst for Sony Music Entertainment in Manhattan, find what they get from unemployment barely accounts for one fifth of their previous earnings, reports the Times.
Thousands of laid-off New Yorkers like Sklar find themselves relying on their parents to help them support their own families as they struggle to keep up with bills and maintain health insurance for their children. Even younger people without families are being forced to make a radical adjustment from the times in which they would dine out a few times a week with friends or take the subway rather than walk 10 blocks to the park.
Yet amid all Albany's bailout plans, none have come to the rescue of unemployed New Yorkers. The state is considering a measure that would increase benefits slowly over the next few years to $625 weekly, but the legislation has stalled in committees. Business lobbyists have successfully thwarted the bill for years because of the increase in the payroll levy that supports the insurance system it would entail, according to the Times.
For many New Yorkers, nothing can come through fast enough. Without a change in the system, the benefits those without jobs receive wouldn't even cover the average monthly rent -- $2,000 -- for a studio apartment in Manhattan, reports the Times.
It’s bad enough to be single and unemployed in such conditions. Imagine a family of five.
