Last week the Senate passed the Unemployment Insurance Benefits Extension to help families who are still struggling to find work.

Extending unemployment insurance benefits creates $1.63 in demand for every dollar spent. That's pretty simulative. And it makes sense - unemployment benefits are likely to be spent, quickly and in local communities. Unemployed workers no longer get a paycheck, but their bills don't stop. They have to make their mortgage payments and put food on the table and pay their electric bills. Unemployment benefits improve the economy.

Our unemployment rate in Minnesota is 6.8 percent. There are 14.6 million Americans looking for jobs but unable to find them. Nearly half of these friends and families and neighbors have been out of work for over six months, despite sustained efforts to find jobs. Long-term unemployment is the worst that it's been in the 60 years that these statistics have been kept. You'd have to go back to 1983 to find numbers even half this bad.

And the competition for each of these jobs is fierce. It's not uncommon for hundreds of people to be fighting for a single job posting. In 2006, there were about 1.5 unemployed workers for every job opening. That number has now exploded to five unemployed workers for every opening. 

I travel all over Minnesota talking to people who are out of work. I've been to the Anoka County Workforce Center; I've been to union halls in Duluth, in Bemidji, and in Rochester. All across Minnesota I've meet with folks who are literally depressed. These are people who have worked their whole lives. Folks who started their first paper route when they were nine or ten and took pride in doing their job, even when it meant delivering papers at six a.m. on a 30 below zero Minnesota winter morning. 

And they've been working ever since. Work is an enormous part of their identity. These Minnesotans don't want an unemployment check. They want work. Still, I've had a number of them come to me and say, "You know, if it weren't for unemployment insurance, I wouldn't be in my house." 

The Senate must show compassion toward those still out of work and support spending programs that will help us emerge from this downturn. Last week the Senate extended unemployment benefits so that struggling Minnesotans can worry about finding a job instead of worrying about feeding their families and keeping a roof over their heads. And I'm proud that we were able to help them.