Unemployment
...must be willingly able to go out and search for a new job. In some cases, you must even show proof that you are trying to get a new career. To establish a payable claim, you must have received enough wages to meet the requirements. Unemployment offices use the wages paid to a worker during a recent 12-month period, called the base period, to calculate the benefit amount. The base period is the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters before you filed the claim. (A quarter is a three-month period.) This means that when benefits are calculated, offices use earnings in the calendar quarter in which you filed your claim, or the quarter just before that. They base the weekly benefit amount on the highest quarter earnings in your base period. Then, total earnings divide the high quarters earnings by 25 to get your weekly benefit amount. Sometimes that amount has to be reduced depending on what is allowed at that time. The maximum, or total, benefit amount is the smaller of 26 times the weekly amount, or 27% of all the wages in the base period. The weekly benefit amount will be between $53 and $330 depending upon the wages previously earned. If someone wishing to receive benefits meets all the aforementioned, there are still some factors remaining that could disqualify them from getting help. If someone was laid off, or fired due to lack of work, no benefits will be awarded. Another reason you wouldn’t be able to receive benefits is if you quit a job, or leave a job to move in with somebody you aren’t eligible. If any of these circumstances are evident for anyone trying to apply they will be denied. Although unemployment was designed to help people out, it can, however cause some serious psychological and mental problems. Several studies have actually linked being unemployed and drug abuse together. The studies conducted said that when someone looses their job, they go into a depression. That is the number one cause of drug abuse. People will start to use the drugs to help them cope with the fact they have to make a lifestyle change and become addicted. In some cases the people that start using have to seek professional medical help. There are also several other problems that can be caused as a result of a job loss. If you have a family and lose a job, that can be rather hard on the person that lost the job to help keep bills paid and food on the table. If a person is used to making x amount of dollars for a certain period of time, you will eventually build your lifestyle around that amount. You will know what you can buy with that amount and you will also know how much money you will have to spend. If someone looses their job, you won’t have that amount of money to use anymore and you will have to adapt to using the new amount, or the amount of money you will receive from your unemployment checks. Sometimes that can be pretty devastating and it can cause problems. It can cause problems between you and a spouse due to fights and arguments about money. It can also result in moving because you cannot afford to keep up with payments. The way the problem is handled depends on your family and living environments as well as any help you receive elsewhere. When somebody gets laid off, they will naturally have to go find another job. When they get hired onto the new jobsite, they are considered to be at the bottom of the pay scale. That would seem like a good situation. Someone gets laid off, they might receive help for a while, and they are back on their feet at a new job. But there is a problem with that situation. Bigger companies are starting to move their businesses over seas or to different locations. If the company he worked for decided to move, the newest people on the job would be the first to go. Being laid off due to your company moving elsewhere is not the only situation someone would keep losing a job to. Companies and businesses deflate, and lay workers off all the time. There are a lot of different situations like this where someone who just got off unemployment and started a new job has to file for unemployment again because they were the last person to be hired, which means they are the first to be fired. It seems to be like a vicious circle that happens all the time. This is why it’s considered to be a big problem in this country. It seems like sometimes unemployment is of no help, and that’s why studies are being conducted to figure out a way to solve this situation. Another way of helping out the unemployment situation are public works programs. Public works are designed for people in need of a job for a certain period of time. If a highway or a bridge is being built, the government will call on unemployed individuals to help work on the site. When working they have a temporary fix with their unemployment situation, and they also get a job to help them out with money situations. Herbert Hoover founded the public works in the era of the Great Depression. He would write letters to the government asking them to build more bridges and road to give people temporary jobs to help out with the depression and unemployed workers. After the public works system started to work he then tried to get other organizations involved. He would ask contractors and construction to expand to give more jobs to individuals needing them. This seems to be like a good system that worked to give people temporary jobs and relief from the stress of not having a job. Public works, as well as other programs are being worked on today to help give temporary jobs. Government, and publicly funded organizations help out with trying to solve unemployment issues in society. Branches of the government and countless committees are always trying to come up with ways to make the system a little better, but there are always factors keeping unemployment full of faults and problems. One major factor is the abuse of the unemployment system. Unemployment helps out mos...