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Long-Term Unemployed Face End Of Benefits

Jae C. Hong
/
Associated Press
FILE - A job seeker grabs a flyer advertising a job at Orange County One Stop Center in Westminster, Calif., Friday, Jan. 4, 2013.

Unemployment benefits are about to run out for tens of thousands of Northwesterners. Without a Congressional extension, payments will stop later this month to people who've been without a job for more than six months.

The holiday season will mean an end to unemployment checks for about 1.3 million Americans, including about 45,000 jobless in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. State benefits are still intact, but those last no more than six months. These cuts affect people who, in some cases, have been looking for work for more than a year.

Tom Fuller with the Oregon Employment Department says the agency is reaching out to people affected to try to get them additional job skills. But Fuller says the department is also preparing people for that day when the checks no longer come.

"We're going to also connect them to community resources, perhaps food banks, other social service types of agencies that can help them bridge that gap with no unemployment benefits available,” Fuller said.

Employment departments in Oregon, Washington and Idaho have been notifying people by phone and by mail if their benefits are about to run out. Congress has acted in the past to extend unemployment benefits. But lawmakers appear ready to go home for the holidays without acting.

Chris Lehman graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree in 1997. He landed his first job less than a month later, producing arts stories for Red River Public Radio in Shreveport, Louisiana. Three years later he headed north to DeKalb, Illinois, where he worked as a reporter and announcer for NPR–affiliate WNIJ–FM. In 2006 he headed west to become the Salem Correspondent for the Northwest News Network.