Everyone is celebrating now that Congress passed a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits, on top of the 26 weeks already provided.

But many of you shouldn’t be breaking out the champagne.

If you get laid off tomorrow will you get an unemployment check?

Maybe not.

Have you checked your state lately to find out how long you’re supposed to be working for an employer before you’re eligible for jobless benefits?

In many states, you have to be working full time for a company for a few years and make a certain threshold income before you qualify.

“Most people who lose their jobs these days don’t qualify for any unemployment at all,” said Robert Reich, the former U.S. Labor Secretary under Clinton, on the Marketplace Morning Report this morning. Here’s an audio of the piece:

The economic world has changed a lot since the federal government encouraged states to adopt unemployment insurance in 1935, but no one seemed to notice.

The unemployment system made sense decades ago, Reich says, when people were in the same full-time job for years and one breadwinner could sustain a whole family.

But today, he adds, when people are going from job to job, and a growing number of individuals have several part time jobs or are contractors, a gigantic economic black hole is left for a huge number of working Americans to fall into.

“It’s a disgrace that most Americans that loose their jobs don’t qualify,” Reich maintains. “Congress should expand coverage in these perilous times.”

Expanding the benefits by 13 weeks was a good thing. I’m not knocking it. But it will do little to help American workers if they can’t even qualify for one day.