Compromise tax deal extends jobless benefits for 1,700 US Virgin Islanders

President Barack Obama’s compromise with Republican lawmakers to extend Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits will aid more than 1,700 local recipients of unemployment insurance, V.I. Labor Commissioner Albert Bryan Jr. said.

Unemployment insurance benefits will be extended retroactively in the territory until January 2012, Bryan said in a statement from Government House on Wednesday.

The deal cut earlier this month extended tax cuts first established by former President George W. Bush, as well as unemployment benefits that would have run out for those long-term recipients.

“The passage of this act ensures that over 1,700 individuals and their families have an income stream for an additional 13 months, maintaining the current extended benefit limits, which is 73 weeks of unemployment benefits,” Bryan said in the statement.

Currently, four tiers of unemployment compensation — three of which are for extended benefits — are available.

A claimant initially is entitled to a maximum of 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, which the territory pays. Once a claimant exhausts the 26 weeks of regular unemployment, they are kicked up to the federally funded extended benefits, which could offer them up to 47 weeks of further benefits.

In all, beneficiaries can receive up to 73 weeks of unemployment.

This tax-cut extension would not extend unemployment benefits for those recipients who have exhausted those 73 weeks, Bryan said.

Initial unemployment claims in the territory have risen throughout the year, as has the unemployment rate — to 8.2 percent. The latest figures for initial claims in the Virgin Islands were from August, which had 465 claims. It was the highest number of unemployment claims in the territory since September 2009, which had more than 500 claims.

Since 2008, the Labor Department has distributed more than $91 million in unemployment insurance, according to the Government House statement.

“The additional benefit of this act is that it provides an additional period of transition for not only job placement, but for training and retraining opportunities so that at the end of the benefit period employment may be possible,” Bryan said.

“This, coupled with the fact that 66 percent of V.I. beneficiaries use all of their regular unemployment, makes the passage of this bill crucial to the territory,” the commissioner said.