For Immediate Release: Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Contact: Karen Conner or Eve Turow, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

The unemployment extension the Senate passed today will help millions of deserving Americans survive an economic calamity.  It will also generate 257,000 payroll jobs or 382,000 full-time equivalents, when all the additional hours of work are included.

This bill is a bargain.  Thanks to the higher revenues government will receive because of increased economic activity, the true cost of the bill will be only $13.5 billion, about $35,000 per full-time equivalent job created or saved.