An estimated 11,400 Alabama residents are losing their federal unemployment benefits.

Those benefits ended Saturday after Congress adjourned for the year without extending federal aid for the long term unemployed.

Another 18,800 Alabama residents are expected to use up their state benefits sometime in the first six months of 2014 and would have no federal aid to move to if the program is not renewed.

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program began in 2008 during the recession as a supplement to state benefits, especially in places with chronically high unemployment.

As the federal program is set to expire at the end of this year, President Barack Obama and other Democrats have called for another extension.

The average weekly payment is about $200, which is less than minimum wage for a full- time worker.

The state’s regular program pays beneficiaries for 26 weeks. The federal program this year provided another 28 weeks, for a total of 54 weeks. At the height of the recession, the total available was 99 weeks, but the federal program has been scaled back as the economy improved.

The two- year budget agreement that Congress approved earlier this month does not extend the federal benefits, though some Democrats want at least a three month extension.

Alabama’s unemployment rate was 6.2 percent in November, but some counties have double-digit unemployment.

(Associated Press – Anniston Star/www.annistonstar.com)