Provide 26 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits to jobless workers State policy proposals to address trust fund solvency after the Great Recession have focused less on generating greater revenue from employer contributions and more on weakening long-accepted features of state programs. One feature that lawmakers are willing to target more than ever before is the 26-week maximum duration of benefits. Such proposals are unnecessarily harsh and are not supported by recent empirical evidence.39 Furthermore, they threaten to diminish the program’s automatic stabilizing effect in the future.