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Cut in benefits to have big impact on Calif. jobless

MERCED, Calif. - Unemployed workers in rural California are bracing for next Saturday: the day the state’s chronically unemployed will be cut off from the nation’s jobless benefits.

A drop in California’s unemployment rate to 11 percent - its lowest mark in three years - is triggering the federal cutoff of emergency long-term unemployment pay to at least 93,000 Californians.

But in the state’s agricultural heartland, where Brenda Callahan-Johnson runs the Merced County Community Action Agency, a jobless rate of more than 20 percent - two and a half times the nationwide average of 8.2 percent - makes it difficult for some to believe an economic recovery has begun.

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“I think Merced County is used to hardships, but we are stretched beyond our capacity here,’’ said Callahan-Johnson, who runs the county’s Community Action agency. “In Merced County there are no jobs to be had.’’

The cutoff is another blow to the region, which has the state’s highest percentage of people living below the poverty line, and where the bursting of the housing bubble has led to the highest foreclosure rate in the country.

The state is just one of eight where the chronically unemployed will lose support May 12. The others are Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas, where another 140,000 people will be affected. Fifteen other states were cut in April, including Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The Golden State has lost its luster for many of the chronically unemployed, and even for those whose job it is to provide antipoverty services to them. With just two weeks’ notice, those 93,000 people will join 670,000 other unemployed Californians whose benefits, averaging $292 a week, already have run out.

“This is a hard cutoff. It’s not like you get to finish out your 20 weeks,’’ said Maurice Emsellem, policy codirector of the National Employment Law Project. “This is a very dramatic impact with this latest wave of workers . . . who once were gainfully employed who have run out of everything.’’

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