Rachael Ray Comes to Wilmington

NOTE:  The Wilmington Ohio Benefit Bank is helping to register community members in need.  Tell a friend or stop by our office on Saturday from 9-12 to register for this event (you can also register to help out!)!!

Courtsey of the Wilmington News Journal


Rachael Ray Show to host dinner in Wilmington

NEWS JOURNAL STAFF REPORT

Economically, times may be tough, but the Wilmington area community knows that there is a lot to be thankful about. And an Emmy-winning talk show host is helping bring the spirit of thanksgiving to the city in a big way.

“Worried about Thanksgiving dinner? The Rachael Ray Show’s got you covered,” a show spokesperson said Wednesday. We can’t fix the economy, but we can do our part — and what we know about is food. So if you’re worried about a Thanksgiving meal, you can relax — we’ve got a plan. We’re inviting residents of Wilmington who are facing economic hardship to have a Thanksgiving dinner on us. The dinner will be held in town on Nov. 8. It’s a chance to share what we have, and celebrate what we’re thankful for, as a community.”

A show spokesperson said that Ray will be in attendance at the event, which will be held at the Roberts Convention Centre.

To attend the dinner, area residents must register for the opportunity. Everyone who registers must be at least 18 years of age, and must show a government-issued photo ID proving residence in the 45177 zip code. You can register in two ways:

Online, at www.RachaelRayShow.com/Ohio by phone at 1-800-972-2579.

Registrants may bring up to five other guests with them to the dinner. You must register by midnight Nov. 1, 2009. Additional restrictions apply.

“We will make every effort to accommodate everyone who registers, but seating capacity is limited,” a show spokesperson said. “You will be notified by Nov. 4 with confirmation if you have gained admission to dinner. We expect to be able to feed everyone who registers … but if you do not receive a confirmation, it means that unfortunately we’ve reached seating capacity.”

For residents who are not in need this holiday season, there are other opportunities to participate.

“If you’re lucky enough to have a full pantry this holiday season, we invite you to join us in serving others in your community as we pull this dinner together,” a show spokesperson said, which could include activities such as cooking and decorating. “You can contact us at 1-800-2579 and offer to help. We encourage residents who are not in need to leave dinner seats open for neighbors hit hardest by the economy.

“Times are tough — and that’s when people depend on each other the most. So count on us for a Thanksgiving dinner, Nov. 8. The Rachael Ray show is looking forward to sharing the blessings of the season with Wilmington.”

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Fresh From the Wilmington News Journal... More Reasons to Visit the WOBB to find out if you qualify for Benefits.

 10/22/09

Unemployment falls, yet area counties rank high in jobless numbers

Staff and AP Reports

The unemployment rates may be dropping, but Clinton County and surrounding counties are climbing the ranks in Ohio’s jobless numbers.
September numbers rank Clinton County with the seventh highest unemployment rate in the state of Ohio, while neighboring Highland County ranks at the top of the list. August numbers had Clinton County with the 10th highest and Highland County with the second highest, behind Meigs County.
After a slight decline in August to 14.5 percent in Clinton County, the rate of joblessness dropped further to 13.9 percent in September, according to statistics released by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS).
Clinton County Board of Commissioners President David Stewart said that the commissioners are working to bring jobs back to Clinton County.
The commissioners recognize the unemployment rate in Clinton County,” Stewart said. “The job loss with the DHL air park was devistating, and we will continue to work hard to bring jobs back to Clinton County.”
Stewart said the fact that the jobless numbers were falling was a sign of a positive upturn.
“I’m optimistic,” Stewart said. “I’m an optimistic person. We have a lot of assets here, and when the economy starts to turn around we will be able to market the community very well. We have a tremendous work ethic in the citizens of Clinton County, and I think businesses will recognize that. We will continue to work to bring jobs to Clinton County.”
The unemployment rate also declined in neighboring Highland and Fayette counties in September. The rate was 15.3 percent in Highland County, a full percentage point below the rate reported for August. In Fayette County, the rate of joblessness declined to 11.7 percent. Unemployment had remained at 12.1 percent for the previous two months in Fayette County.
Ohio’s unemployment rate was 10.1 percent in September, down from 10.8 percent in August. Ohio’s nonfarm wage and salary employment decreased 5,900 over the month, from 5,103,100 in August to 5,097,200 in September.
“Ohio’s unemployment rate declined in September as more Ohioans dropped out of the labor force,” ODJFS Director Douglas Lumpkin said. “The service-providing and goods-producing sectors continued to show losses as well.”
The number of workers unemployed in Ohio in September was 594,000, down from 641,000 in August. The number of unemployed has increased by 190,000 in the past 12 months from 404,000. The September unemployment rate for Ohio was up from 6.8 percent in September 2008.
Unemployment also was down in Dayton and Cincinnati. For Dayton, the rate for September was 12 percent, below 12.6 percent reported for August. The rate of joblessness is now below 10 percent in Cincinnati. For September, the rate was 9.3 percent, down from 10.1 percent in August.
The U.S. unemployment rate for September was 9.8 percent, up from 9.7 percent in August.
Even with an economic revival, many U.S. jobs lost during the recession may be gone forever and a weak employment market could linger for years. That could add up to a “new normal” of higher joblessness and lower standards of living for many Americans, some economists are suggesting.
The words “it’s different this time” are always suspect. But economists and policy makers say the job-creating dynamics of previous recoveries can’t be counted on now.
Here’s why:
— The auto and construction industries helped lead the nation out of past recessions. But the carnage among Detroit’s automakers and the surplus of new and foreclosed homes and empty commercial properties make it unlikely these two industries will be engines of growth anytime soon.
— The job market is caught in a vicious circle: Without more jobs, U.S. consumers will have a hard time increasing their spending; but without that spending, businesses might see little reason to start hiring.
— Many small and midsize businesses are still struggling to obtain bank loans, impeding their expansion plans and constraining overall economic growth.
— Higher-income households are spending less because of big losses on their homes, retirement plans and other investments. Lower-income households are cutting back because they can’t borrow like they once did.
That the recovery in jobs will be long and drawn out is something on which economists and policy makers can basically agree, even as their proposals for remedies vary widely.
Retrenching businesses will be slow in hiring back or replacing workers they laid off. Many of the 7.2 million jobs the economy has shed since the recession began in December 2007 may never come back.
Many economists believe the recession reversed course in the recently ended third quarter and they predict modest growth in the nation’s gross domestic product over the next few years. Yet the unemployment rate is currently at a 26-year high of 9.8 percent — and likely to top 10 percent soon and stay there a while.
“Many factors are pushing against a quick recovery,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute. “Things will come back. But it’s going to take a long time. I think we will likely see elevated unemployment at least until 2014.”
At best, many economists see an economic recovery without a return to moderate unemployment. At worst, they suggest the fragile recovery could lose steam and drag the economy back under for a double-dip recession.
“We will need to grind out this recovery step by step,” President Barack Obama said earlier this month.
Obama and congressional Democrats are having a hard time agreeing on how to keep the recovery going and help millions of unemployed workers — short of another round of stimulus spending amid rising voter alarm over soaring federal deficits.
So far, they’ve been unable to win even a simple three-month extension of unemployment insurance for people in states with jobless rates above 8.5 percent.
The extension easily passed the House earlier this month but is bogged down in the Senate over disputes over which states would get the funds. Hundreds of thousands of people have already lost their benefits or are about to lose them.
The White House credits the president’s $787 billion stimulus plan passed in February for keeping job losses from becoming even worse. Since Obama took office in January, the economy has lost 3.4 million jobs.
Republicans argue that the stimulus program has not worked as a job producer and is a waste of tax money. And last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a multimillion advertising campaign to celebrate small business entrepreneurs — and to argue that further government intervention will not spur permanent job growth.
Chamber leaders called for creation of more than 20 million new private-sector jobs over the next decade, saying it’s needed to replace jobs lost in the recession and to keep pace with population growth. To many economists, such a goal seems unreachable given today’s altered economic landscape.
Many economists consider a jobless rate of 4 to 5 percent as reflecting a “full employment” economy, one in which nearly everyone who wants a job has one. After the 2001 recession the rate climbed to 5.8 percent in 2002 and peaked at 6.3 percent in 2003 before easing back to 4.6 percent for 2006 and 2007.

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Jobless benefits run out for many Ohioans

If U.S. Senate fails to act on extension, 65,000 in state will fall off rolls by year's end


Thursday, October 8, 2009 3:22 AM

By Tracy Turner


THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


The number of Ohioans who have exhausted their unemployment benefits has risen to levels not seen since the early 1980s.
At the end of September, benefits ran out for 21,000 people, and that number is expected to grow several times over by the end of the year unless more help is made available.
The U.S. Senate is debating whether to extend unemployment benefits for an additional 13 weeks, but that effort is stalled for now.
Like thousands of others, Randy Hotsinpiller of Westerville is waiting anxiously and hoping an extension passes. His benefits run out in four weeks.
"Right now, unemployment is the only thing that keeps me afloat," said Hotsinpiller, who was laid off in April after working in information technology for 27 years. "They say there's six people competing for every one job opening, but in my experience, it seems to be so many more.
"If 3 million people fall off the unemployment roll, what will happen to them? It's crucial that they get this thing passed. Unemployment benefits aren't much, but they at least keep a roof over your head."
Ohio's unemployment rate stood at 10.8 percent in August, the most-recent figure available, after dropping slightly from July. Overall, the report showed the state with 5.1 million people employed and 641,000 jobless.
At any given time, the state has had more than 300,000 citizens collecting unemployment, with an average stay of 16 weeks, causing a constant churn that's difficult to track, said Judi Cicatiello, deputy director of unemployment compensation.
"We started seeing larger groups of people exhaust their benefits in early September, but this is the first time a group this large has extended its benefits at one time" in more than 20 years, Cicatiello said. "These are certainly dire times."
The bill before the U.S. Senate would extend jobless benefits by 13 weeks to workers in Ohio and 28 other states where the unemployment rate is greater than 8.5 percent. To be eligible for those additional benefits, those in Ohio would have to exhaust the current 79 weeks they have received from both the state and federal governments.
Passage of the bill has been stalled by lawmakers who are upset that their states would be left out.
The extension would allow some unemployed workers in Ohio to eventually collect 92 weeks of benefits: the state's 26 and the federal government's 53, as well as the additional 13 federally backed weeks.
If the extension isn't passed, 65,000 Ohioans would exhaust their benefits by the end of the year, said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who co-sponsored the bill. In central Ohio, 2,109 people are expected to exhaust their unemployment benefits this month, he said, including 1,186 in Franklin County.
"Unemployment is an insurance program, not welfare. There's broad support to extend it, and it serves as a stimulus," Brown said. "They put that money right back into the economy, money that will be spent by people looking to put bread on their table."
Brown said he hopes there will be a vote on the issue by next week, if not sooner. He said he's "very sympathetic to extending it to states that haven't been hit as hard by the recession, but my goal is to get it done as soon as possible so that people don't see their compensation expire."
In Ohio, Gov. Ted Strickland extended unemployment benefits an extra 20 weeks for Ohioans who lost their benefits in February. That extension ended last month, said Brian Harter, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The state does not have the option to extend benefits again, he said.
One-third of the nation's 15 million unemployed people have been jobless for six months or more, according to the National Employment Law Project. The New York-based research and advocacy group said the rate is at a record high since data started being recorded in 1948.
Margie Brown is one of the statistics. The East Side resident had no idea she'd still be without work a year after being laid off from her job as an administrative assistant.
In Ohio, the average unemployment benefit is $315. The maximum amount for a worker with three or more dependents is $503 per week. Both weekly amounts are bolstered by an extra $25 from the federal government.
"Unemployment is allowing me the time to get retrained in another field because no one is hiring in what I've worked in previously," Brown said. "Without it, it'd be an extreme hardship for my family. It helps people keep our noses above the water."
If an extension of unemployment benefits is passed by the federal government, Cicatiello said, the state would be able to start distributing payments after 45 days.
"We've been doing everything we can to get ready for it," she said. "We know how dire these times are and how vitally important unemployment is for people. We know we are their primary safety net."





tturner@dispatch.com

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Exercise Your Right To Vote!

Are you registered to vote?  If not, now is the time to stop into the WOBB and get registered!  Give us a call or stop in!  You'll be glad you did!

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WOBB in the News!

10/1/2009



Wilmington Benefit Bank Welcomes AmeriCorps Volunteer

The Wilmington Ohio Benefit Bank welcomed it’s second AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) member this month. Annen Stuckert joins Alex Ives at the Benefit Bank site located at 61 E. Main Street. Annen Stuckert has lived in Wilmington for 4 years with her husband Rob Stuckert who is a 3rd grade teacher at Denver Elementary. She also has a 2 year old daughter named Alora.

Annen and Alex will be working together to recruit and train volunteers to become Counselors at the Benefit Bank. The Wilmington Ohio Benefit Bank works to help low and monderate income familes apply for Federal Benefits, such as Food Stamps, Medical Assistance, HEAP, Rx Prescription Help, and many more.

To learn more about your local Benefit Bank site, call our office at 937-366-1279, e-mail us at contactus@wilmingtonobb.com , visit our webpage, http://www.wilmingtonobb.com/, or find us on Facebook.

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