Changes in unemployment insurance legislation in 1997 (EXCERPT), Monthly Labor Review Online, Jan. 1998

Changes in unemployment insurance legislation in 1997

Diana Runner

I n 1997, Congress enacted two laws that affect the Nation's unemployment compensation program—the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-33), and the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-34). At the State level, enactments addressed such diverse issues as the recoupment of food stamp overpayments, the withholding of Federal income tax from benefit payments, and adjustments to minimum and maximum weekly benefit amounts.

The Balanced Budge Act of 1997:

Provides that States must authorize that the wage and claim information that they are required to disclose to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services for use in the National Directory of New Hires may be disclosed to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Social Security Administration, and State Child Support Enforcement Agencies;
Provides that an individual's base period is a matter of each State to determine, and is not subject to Federal jurisdiction. This means that States will have complete authority in setting base periods for determining eligibility for benefits. This change came about as the result of a case heard before the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Effective October 1, 2001, raised the ceiling or maximum balance in the Federal Unemployment Account (FUA)¹ as of the end of any Federal fiscal year (September 30) to 0.5 percent (was 0.25 percent) of the total wages subject to contributions under all State unemployment compensation laws.

This excerpt is from an article published in the January 1998 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.

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Footnotes
¹The FUA account is an account in the Unemployment Trust Fund (UTF) used to provide interest-bearing loans to States whose benefit accounts in the UTF are exhausted, enabling them to continue to pay unemployment benefits to eligible unemployed individuals.

Related BLS programs
BLS does not have any programs that directly relate to the topic of this article.

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Changes in State unemployment insurance legislation in 1996. January 1997.

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