On the heels of a national study showing the human toll that will be experienced if key provisions within the federal stimulus package are allowed to end, Iowa Workforce Development Deputy Director Joseph Walsh is calling for Congress to renew unemployment and COBRA benefits.

Joseph Walsh

Joseph Walsh

“The unemployment crisis will not disappear simply because we move into 2010,” Walsh said. “Without an immediate extension of [stimulus] benefits, thousands of Iowans will lose benefits during the first quarter of 2010.”

According to a study made public today by the National Employment Law Project, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Half in Ten Campaign, one million workers will become ineligible for unemployment benefits in January 2010 unless Congress reauthorizes the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s unemployment insurance programs by the end of of December. The report estimates that that number will swell to more than 3.2 million workers by March if no action is taken.

Locally, over 10,000 Iowans will exhaust their regular state unemployment benefits during the first quarter of 2010. Without a deadline extension, these individuals will not receive any of the federal unemployment benefit extensions. An additional 20,000 will exhaust a portion of the three tiers of federal extensions and will not be allowed to continue in the program.

Walsh was one of several state workforce officials who participated in a press conference Monday morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to call for Congress to renew the benefits.