Because NYC Unemployment Is Less Than Everywhere Else

For New York’s Newly Jobless, $430 Doesn’t Go Far

Lose your job in Boston, Pittsburgh, Seattle or Trenton and you could collect $544 or more per week in unemployment benefits. But get laid off in New York City, as almost 200,000 workers have in the past year, and the most you can collect is $430 a week.

Despite its high cost of living, New York pays less to its unemployed than about two dozen other states, including all of its neighbors. New York’s benefits have not been raised by lawmakers in Albany in more than a decade, making it particularly difficult for jobless residents of the metropolitan area to pay for food, rent and health insurance.

Michael Sklar, 51, said he had resorted to asking his parents for financial help after several months of trying to support his family of three on the unemployment pay he collects from New York State. The federal unemployment insurance system was designed to temporarily replace about half of a laid-off worker’s lost income, but Mr. Sklar’s benefits amount to just one-fifth of what he said he had earned as a senior systems analyst for Sony Music Entertainment in Manhattan before he was dismissed in late August.

Most of his unemployment pay goes toward the $1,300 a month he pays to maintain the health insurance his family had obtained through Sony. To cover the rest of the family’s expenses, including college tuition for his son, Mr. Sklar has been using his severance pay and savings, he said. He and his wife have cut out frills like movies and eating out. They occasionally attend free cooking classes at a Mexican restaurant in Hackensack, N.J., for the meals that come with them.
Mr. Sklar, who lives in Fort Lee, N.J., said that he had considered filing for bankruptcy but avoided doing so by borrowing from his parents, who are in their 80s.

“I shouldn’t have to turn to my parents, as a 51-year-old man, and ask for money,” he said.
Supporting a family on unemployment benefits can be a challenge anywhere in the country, even in Massachusetts, where the unemployed can collect more than $650 a week, the most in the nation. But the situation has become more acute in New York because its state unemployment insurance system does not adjust the level of benefits annually to account for inflation, as its neighboring states do.

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Until state lawmakers agree to change the system, jobless New Yorkers will be left with benefits that would not cover the average rent on a studio apartment in Manhattan, still averaging nearly $2,000 a month. In Massachusetts, the maximum weekly benefit, excluding add-ons for dependents, is $653. It is $609 in New Jersey, $544 in Connecticut and $583 in Pennsylvania. Washington State’s $566 benefit will rise to $611 in May.

More than a week’s benefits are eaten up each month by the $514 premium she pays to maintain the health insurance she had through Viacom, which owns MTV, Ms. Weissman said.
“I’m cutting down on luxuries I used to enjoy, such as taking the subway,” she said.
“I don’t go out as much as I used to, and if I do, I don’t drink as much. I’ll look for any happy hour I can find.”

Plus, she said, she has found that “friends are more likely to buy you a drink when you are out of work.”