MORE AMERICANS LOSING EMPLOYER INSURANCE

[Guest American4Progress]

Employers have shed 5.1 million jobs in the last 15 months, and approximately "2.4 million workers have lost the health coverage their jobs provided since the start of the recession." In fact, a new analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor statistics by the Center for American Progress concludes that the worst losses have been in the first three months of 2009, when more than 1 million workers lost health coverage. In March alone, more than 320,000 Americans lost their employer-provided health insurance, "which amounts to approximately 10,680 workers a day." Manufacturing, construction, and professional and business services accounted for three-quarters of total jobs lost, while employees in the durable goods manufacturing sector bore "the greatest burden of the losses in coverage with approximately 733,600 workers becoming uninsured since December 2007," the report concluded. Still, estimates of the rise in the number of uninsured "do not reflect the full extent of health coverage loss due to lost employment." As the report explains, the numbers represent a "conservative estimate of the number affected, since it leaves out spouses and children who may have also lost coverage as a result of a spouse or parent losing their jobs."