South Carolina is going through one of the highest unemployment periods since the Great Depression. It is not just that the unemployment rate is high, people are also staying unemployed for longer. It is during this economic situation that legislators in South Carolina have decided to drop the number of weeks you can claim unemployment benefits from 26 to 20. It could have been worse. South Carolina is not alone in this latest spree of reducing unemployment benefits. Ten states have made cuts on unemployment benefits in the last month. While some states made modest reductions, such as Arkansas and Illinois which cut the number of unemployment weeks from 26 to 25, others were much more significant. For instance Missouri and Michigan also dropped their unemployment benefits from 26 to 20.

The largest cuts were made by Florida, which also happens to be the third state with the highest unemployment rate after Nevada and California. Florida reduced the maximum number of unemployment benefits from 26 to a sliding maximum of 12 to 23 depending on the current unemployment rate. If the unemployment rate is 5 percent or lower, the maximum number of unemployment benefits is 12, if the unemployment rate is above 8 percent, the maximum is 23 weeks.

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