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Just 35 Percent Of Americans Cash In On Jobless Benefits

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/jobless-unemployment-st-louis-fed-claims-rarer-than-overpayments-2012-10

Among consumers eligible for unemployment benefits, just over one-third actually bother to cash in on average, according to new data from the  Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. 

The data applies to the last 22 years (1989 to 2011), save for during the recession, when elligible claims rose to 50 percent.

The findings are key for a couple of reasons.

Back in July, CNN Money cited data that showed that the Dept. of Labor had overpaid jobless claims by no less than $14 billion in 2011. In 2009, it was estimated that 11 percent of all claims were overpaid, for a total of about $11 billion. 

But since so many elligible workers are actually leaving their cash on the table, the agency should be more than capable of making up for lost funds.

For example, the 50 percent of workers who didn’t apply for benefits in 2009 saved the government an estimated $108 billion.

That’s more than 10 times as much cash the Dept. of Labor said was wasted on overpaying benefits the same year

There’s no denying overpaying jobless benefits is a problem –– most of them wind up in the hands of prisoners, identity thieves, retirees, and current workers –– but the report at least helps put that shortcoming into perspective.

Fraud is responsible for just 3 percent of all benefits paid, the Fed found, while eligible consumers leave seven times that much cash on the table by not applying for benefits.

And overpayments are beginning to slowly improve. The Department of Labor reported a 0.35 percent drop in overpayme! nts betw een July 2010 and 2011, and a 0.4 percent drop in errors caused by people who didn’t register their employment status with their state’s labor department.

The BLS put together a map of each state’s improper payment history in 2011, when overpayments topped $14 billion:

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As Australian news site News.com.au reports, a recent Aussie government look at the unhealthy intermingling of social media and the military, several of its soldiers have fallen victim to the oldest trick in the Facebook; someone pretending to be an attractive, flirtatious girl when in reality they’re not. Except instead of spammers, they get enemies of the state:

The review warns troops to beware of “fake profiles – media personnel and enemies create fake profiles to gather information. For example, the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers.”

Why is that a problem, other than terrorists having access to your karaoke pics? Because soldier status updates can often include the kind of seemingly innocuous information that ends up giving away locations, statuses, and other sensitive details that could get people killed.

The report goes on to say that soldiers have been too trusting of Facebook’s default privacy settings, something which we’ve all fallen victim to at one point or another. Its just that the stakes for us normals aren’t anywhere near as high. But what’s the solution? Either to ban social media for troops altogether—as some have argued in favor of—or to insist on stricter guidelines and, especially, enforcement. Let’s hope the latter proves effective. It’s hard enough serving your country in a far-flung land without feeling even more cut off from the world than geography dictates. [News.com.au via Danger Room]

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