This week, the Senate took up the issue of extending long-term unemployment benefits. The debate on the extension, which would aid 1.3 million Americans who saw their benefits end in December, is another sign of the rising prominence of income inequality as a topic in the 2014 elections. …
For long-term unemployment to play a big role in a midterm race, two key elements probably have to be in place. First, there has to be a big population that is affected – that is, lots of long-term unemployed who are tuned into the fight. To get a sense of that, we calculated the projected number of long-term unemployed people who would lose benefits over the next year, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the White House. CONT.
Dante Chinni, Wall Street Journal