Unemployment insurance is meagr compared with benefits in pure countries. The present system doesn't require employers to tell workers such a benefit exists. Some states max out at less than 300 dollars a week for as few as 12 weeks. Unemployed people have been severed from their relationship with each other, says political scientist francis fox pivin. Organizing jobless americans is hard. People don't identify as unemployed the way they do as teachers or coal miners.