NH subcommittee weighs making unemployment weeks variable; members ask for trust-fund and claimant data

A New Hampshire House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services subcommittee on Thursday explored ways to make the number of weeks of unemployment benefits available to claimants change with economic conditions and reviewed an amendment that would add several higher benefit tiers.

Committee members pressed agency officials for more data on who remains on benefits at the 26-week mark and how any change would affect the unemployment trust fund and employer tax rates. Representative Sullivan said she was "distressed over basically abandoning those folks," referring to claimants who remain on benefits at exhaustion points.

The issue at hand is whether the statutory maximum duration available to claimants should sometimes be 20 weeks and sometimes 26 weeks, depending on pre-set triggers. The panel discussed several trigger options: using weekly claim volumes (the count of claims filed in a given week), using the monthly unemployment rate published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or combining the two measures so that both conditions must be met before a longer benefit period is available.

Why it matters: changing the duration affects both individual claimants and the programpotentially raising weekly payments when…