1300.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) California and the national economy are recovering from the deepest recession since the Great Depression; recent data indicates that approximately 700,000 Californians are currently claiming unemployment insurance benefits.
(b) The demand for unemployment insurance benefits remains unusually high because more people are staying unemployed longer. Global competition and rapidly evolving technologies have resulted in the dislocation of millions of workers from their jobs, and even with the creation of new jobs, layoffs have become permanent instead of a temporary
experience during fluctuation in the business cycle.
(c) As reported in the November 2012 California Labor Market Review, 45.7 percent, or approximately 8887,00 888,700 of those unemployed have been so for 27 weeks or more and approximately 34.6 percent of all unemployed, or 671,000, have been so for one year or more.
(d) Currently, 73 weeks of benefits, regular unemployment insurance combined with federal extensions, is the maximum number of weeks a claimant may collect. As of December 17, 2012, over 923,000 unemployed workers in California have run out of all benefits.
(e) There remains a critical need for California policies that will create faster economic and job growth and support for those struggling to find a job.
(f) In 1993, the federal government created the Self-Employment Assistance Program for a five-year period, based on positive results from experimental self-employment demonstration projects conducted by the United States Department of Labor, in collaboration with state employment agencies. Federal law made the program permanent in 1998.
(g) Prior California law, enacted in 1994 and repealed in 2005, established the state Self-Employment Assistance Program as an alternative use of unemployment insurance. This program was an important component of a broader workforce
system strategy to promote entrepreneurship and microbusiness development, both as a reemployment strategy and to support economic development through job creation.
(h) State unemployment insurance programs in Delaware, Maine, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon actively offer unemployed workers the option of reemployment through self-employment assistance programs.
(I)
(i) The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 expanded Self-Employment Assistance Program eligibility, provided funding for states to implement
or improve these programs, and directed the Department of Labor and the Small Business Administration to coordinate efforts to help more Americans start and grow small businesses.
(j) The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 provides thirty-five million dollars ($35,000,000) for Self-Employment Assistance Program grants. Of this amount, California could receive approximately five million three hundred thousand dollars ($5,300,000). Of this amount, four million six hundred thousand dollars ($4,600,000) is available for implementation and administration of the Self-Employment Assistance Program. The remaining seven hundred sixty-nine thousand seven hundred ninety-six dollars ($769,796) is available for the promotion of the Self-Employment Assistance Program.
(k) The Self-Employment Assistance Program is a voluntary state-run program that provides unemployed individuals financial support while they pursue full-time self-employment assistance activities that lead to establishing a business and becoming self-employed.
(l) The California Employment Development Department (EDD) must identify an individual, through a worker profiling system, as likely to exhaust benefits to receive, in lieu of unemployment benefits, a weekly allowance equal to the individual’s weekly unemployment compensation benefit without having to search for full-time wage employment.
(m) The EDD monitors self-employment assistance activities that include entrepreneurial training, business counseling, and business technical assistance. A network of more than
125
organizations throughout the state provides these services.
(n) The Self-Employment Assistance Program is a limited program appropriate to just a small fraction of unemployment insurance benefit claimants. It can help some current unemployment insurance benefit recipients and those who have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits, probably no more than one or 2 percent.
(o) It is, therefore, the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would authorize the establishment of a Self-Employment Assistance Program administered by the Director of Employment Development for the state to become eligible to apply for federal funds by June 30, 2013, to establish, promote, and operate the program.