Ohio’s unemployed gained support from an unlikely source last week. Governor John Kasich, an original member of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement, is looking to expand unemployment benefits as part of a “Learn to Earn” program.
According to Columbus Business First’s Carrie Ghose, the Learn to Earn program would allow jobless individuals to continue collecting unemployment benefits during on-the-job training, for up to eight weeks. This is especially surprising when we’re less than a year removed from the very same Governor turning down $176 million in federal funding because accepting the funding would have required an expansion of unemployment benefits.
“People who have been long-term unemployed develop these big gaps on their resume. They suffer from a deteriorating skill set,” Benjamin Johnson, spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, told Ghose.
