Regardless of what happens with the tax deal, there's no more support for the so-called 99ers, people who have been on unemployment for the maximum length allowable: 99 weeks.

And their numbers are about to swell.

As this chart from Calculated Risk shows nicely, we're about 99 weeks since the very worst of the job losses from late-2008/early-2009. The extent to which their cutoff slams the consumer recovery (and thus everything else) is a huge issue to consider.

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