ICYMI: NYT: WHERE JOBLESS BENEFITS WERE CUT, JOBS ARE STILL HARD TO FILL
Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: “I, as an economist, predict that [jobless benefits] will be better for job matches and a better economy in the long run.”
States that gutted jobless benefits have seen virtually no uptick in applicants, according to new reporting from the New York Times — providing even further proof that unemployment benefits do not disincentivize work.
KEY POINTS FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE:
- Business owners had complained that the assistance, as Gov. Mike Parson put it, “incentivized people to stay out of the work force.” He made Missouri one of the first four states to halt the federal aid; a total of 26 have said they will do so by next month. But in the St. Louis metropolitan area, where the jobless rate was 4.2 percent in May,those who expected the June 12 termination would unleash a flood of job seekers were disappointed.
- Work-force development officials said they had seenvirtually no uptick in applicants since the governor’s announcement, which ended a $300 weekly supplement to other benefits. And the online job site Indeed found that in states that have abandoned the federal benefits, clicks on job postings were below the national average.
- The Biden administration has made clear that it seeks totilt bargaining power toward workers. At the core of the president’s economic model, said Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, “is the view that workers too often lack the necessary bargaining clout to claim their fair share of growth that they themselves are helping to produce.”
- A dynamic labor market is one where the two sides negotiate over compensation, Ms. Daly said.If jobless benefits allow people to be a little more choosy because they are not destitute, she said, then “I, as an economist, predict that will be better for job matches and a better economy in the long run.”
Read the full article here.
Fact Check: Unemployment Insurance Doesn’t Disincentivize Work
In response to recent monthly job reports, some conservative lawmakers are peddling the myth that expanded unemployment insurance (UI) benefits disincentivize work. However, the data shows this is just not true.
Empirical evidence and countless studies have shown that UI benefits do not disincentivize recipients from working:
- Increased UI benefits during Covid did not outweigh the value of a longer-term stable income in workers’ decisions to accept job offers and confirmed that supplemental payments had little or no adverse effect on job searches.
- Evidence from the Great Recession shows that UI benefits had neither statistically significant nor economically meaningful effect on employment, positive or negative.
- About 70% of likely UI recipients who returned to work in May and June of 2020 were making more on UI than their prior wage.
- When the labor market does better, workers exit unemployment benefits for available jobs. In the 13 states with the lowest unemployment rates, continued UI claims are down 26% since their 2021 peak in Feb. In the 13 states with the highest unemployment rates, claims have declined only 17%.
- Studies on UI benefits after the Great Recession found that UI extensions have not had large moral hazard effects on recipients’ job-finding rates, either during the worst period of the Great Recession or during the subsequent recovery.
- Overall, studies have shown no evidence that expanded UI benefits disincentivize work. Additionally, workers who faced larger expansions in UI benefits returned to their previous jobs over time at similar rates as others.
“The concern about the disincentive effect has been massively overblown. […] Concerns about the work disincentive simply ignore the realities of the labor market for working people, who will be very unlikely to turn down a job for a temporary boost in benefits—particularly when it is now clear that jobs are going to be scarce for a very long time.”
“[Evidence from the Great Recession] should reassure policymakers facing a future recession that providing relief to job-losers by extending U.I. will not have substantial unintended effects upon economic activity.”
Arguments that UI benefits disincentivize work are predicated on racist stereotypes.
“These conservatives argue that many people make more money on unemployment than they did at their jobs, so they have no reason to go back. This heavily coded argument isn’t new; in fact, it’s rooted in a long history of racist labor policy in the United States. […] Even though it has always been true that there are more white than Black people using welfare programs, the image of the ‘welfare queen’ plays on America’s racism and demonization of people of color who dared accept help from the same government that institutionalized racism. […] It’s an American pastime to characterize Black workers as lazy, and to label any attempt to help us as encouraging our inherent laziness.”
“Conservatives want to use tired, racist tropes to insinuate workers on UI are lazy, and we can’t let them get away with it, particularly when we know Black workers already are more likely to have UI applications rejected, are concentrated in states with stingier UI, and receive lower benefits than their white counterparts.”
“Republicans have opted to peddle the myth that people, at their core, are lazy and unwilling to work, evoking the racist stereotype of the ‘welfare queen’ instead of ensuring that Americans can pay their bills, do not fall into poverty, and still spend money in an economy starved for consumers”
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