Whats the overall state of unemployment insurance nationwide?
OLGA PIERCE: My overall assessment is that it’s not good. So far, 32 states plus the Virgin Islands have insolvent funds. They are essentially borrowing from the federal government to keep paying checks. So, far they have borrowed $37 billion. There are a few different kinds of states – we talk about ants and grasshopper states, like in the children’s fable. There are some states that kept their systems extremely underfunded for years and entered the recession in trouble – and then essentially folded when unemployment increased. Those were the first crop of states to borrow. A good example of that is New York. Under federal law, even before the recession, states could borrow interest-free for a year. New York would borrow money every year and pay back at the last minute interest-free. So when the recession hit, they had nothing to draw on. Other states — Kansas, for example — had relatively good reserves, but the unemployment increase was so unprecedented they burned through the rese
