A friend of mine sent me this link today: estimates of where state unemployment benefit funds will be in six months.
The verdict for Tennessee’s system? Insolvent.
Here’s ProPublica’s graph of Tennessee data: an unemployment rate of 10.5 percent in November 2009, with 36 percent of unemployed receiving benefits.
ProPublica says:
Low taxes and benefits kept Tennessee’s unemployment fund afloat before the recession — albeit with just six months’ worth of reserves. We project that Tennessee’s fund will be insolvent within six months. To slow the depletion, the state has imposed a business tax increase from $197 to $293 per employee, on average, for 2010.
The good news is, I suppose, that 25 states have already had to start borrowing money from the federal government or cutting benefits and Tennessee isn’t among them.
