U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT

More than one million people look for a job in Florida and most of them can not get access to unemployment benefits. Only 530,000 of them will receive around of $3.5 billion in Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) and recipients started Monday to claim retroactive Extended Benefits.

Florida has been hit very hard by the recession and the problems was intensified after April 2010, when the largest oil spill ever touched the coast of this state, hitting especially the industry and tourism. The unemployment rate in the United States is still 9.5% according to Department of Labor, but in Florida it is 11.4%.

These figures represent a serious problem for Barack Obama and the Democrats. During the Great Depression President Franklin Roosevelt helped millions of people to work on public projects and President Obama tried to apply similar solutions in the last year, but his approval rating oscillates here around 46%.

His team hopes that this program will improve some results in the next weeks, but they will need to fight now with the leading business owners because over the long term, their companies would have to support this project paying higher taxes.

However Florida began sending notifications to those who may qualify for retroactive payments, but the entire situation is very complicated there. More than 110,000 people in Florida have now exhausted their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and they have to hope for a miracle.

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