Rhode Island will offer extended unemployment benefits to as many as 8,000 to 10,800 eligible jobless workers, state officials announced yesterday.

The benefit extensions, effective July 6, will enable job seekers who have run out of their regular unemployment insurance to collect up to 13 weeks in additional benefit payments, according to the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training.

Rhode Island’s benefit extension program was triggered when the state unemployment rate last month climbed to 7.2 percent, pushing the three-month average unemployment rate to 6.5 percent.

Rhode Island is one of only two states, the other being Alaska, that now offer extended unemployment benefits.

Nationally, the swelling ranks of unemployed has increased pressure in Congress for legislation to provide federal financing for extended unemployment benefits to pay for such basics as food, fuel and housing.

In Rhode Island, unemployment benefits replace about 60 percent of gross, taxable earnings up to a maximum of $513 per week. For people with children, the state also provides a dependency allowance.

Nearly 5,000 jobless people in Rhode Island ran out of unemployment benefits during the first quarter of this year, up 29 percent from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Forty-one percent of Rhode Island’s unemployed had exhausted their benefits, the highest share of any state in New England.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an emergency supplemental spending bill that included a 13-week benefit extension for all states whose unemployment rate hit 5.5 percent or higher, but the Senate has yet to vote on the measure. The program is expected to cost $8.2 billion over 11 years, according to NationalJournal.com. (The latest version of the bill does not include previous language that provided an additional 13-week extension for states such as Rhode Island, where the unemployment rate is 6 percent or higher.)

“I’m optimistic that if we can get the bill over here and to the president, [there will be] huge pressure to sign the bill,” U.S. Sen. Jack Reed said yesterday.

If the Senate approves the bill, Rhode Island’s extended-benefits program would be entirely financed by the federal government instead of the state paying half through its unemployment insurance taxes, said the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training’s director, Sandra M. Powell. The federal legislation also could broaden the time frame for eligibility, she said.

State unemployment benefits are financed 50-50 by state and federal unemployment insurance taxes paid by Rhode Island employers.

The federal benefits extension is important for Rhode Island, Reed said, because it would ensure that the state’s share, kept in a state trust fund, “is not jeopardized” by having to pay for extended benefits.

Back in 1977 and ’78, the state trust fund ran out of money after paying for benefit extensions during a period when the state unemployment rate climbed above 10 percent, said the state labor department’s assistant director of income support, Raymond Filippone. The state borrowed more than $100 million from the federal government to replenish the fund. The loan was not fully repaid until 1984.

To replenish the state trust fund, the state also raised the rate at which employers were taxed for unemployment insurance.

Employers now pay taxes of 1.69 percent to 9.79 percent on the first $14,000 in wages paid to each of their employees. The employer’s tax rate is based on their use of unemployment benefits. Companies that lay off fewer employees paid lower tax rates. The taxes go into the state trust fund to pay for unemployment benefits.

As of last month, the state trust fund contained about $150 million.

The latest 13-week benefit extension program is expected to cost the state approximately $18.5 million, said the state’s Filippone. (Including the federal government’s share, the cost is estimated at $37 million.)

“We look at that trust fund level every month and that’s something we’re going to be watching very closely,” said Powell, the state labor director.

The state also will extend the hours of operation at its Network-RI offices to include Saturdays, to provide additional services to people looking for work.

The benefit extensions should not be a “disincentive” to those searching for work, Powell said. “There is a constant churn in the economy and there are jobs available.”

Rhode Island has extended unemployment benefits nine other times in the past 20 years, the last time in 1995.

The last federal benefits extension was in March 2002, following the economic downturn in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

larditi@projo.com