(Un)Happy End of Emergency Unemployment Benefits Day
Policymakers still insist on irresponsibly forcing a full labor market reopening in the middle of a raging pandemic and without making the necessary adjustments from lessons learned
Publisher’s Riff
It is deeply ironic, offensive and criminal that as Americans are pushed to celebrate the Labor Day weekend, an estimated 10 million other Americans are, as of today, losing extended emergency benefits or added weekly unemployment stipends. We’re supposed to conveniently forget about that. Reports the Washington Post …
More than 7 million out-of-work people across the United States are set to lose all of their jobless benefits this weekas three federal programs expire on Monday, in what several experts described as one of the largest and most abrupt ends to government aid in U.S. history.
In addition to the more than 7 million people who will lose all their benefits, nearly 3 million more people will lose a $300 weekly boost to their state unemployment benefits.
Thecessation of this jobless aid, first put in place by Congress nearly 18 months ago, could upend the lives of millions of Americans still struggling to find work at a time when the pandemic’s delta variant is wreaking fresh havoc across a number of states. It could also lead to a sharp pullback in spending, particularly in certain areas of the country, impacting a wide range of restaurants and other businesses that rely on consumer dollars.
Congress is still on vacation - while still calling it a recess - and shows no signs of returning urgently to resolve this latest calamity. The Biden administration has recommended a quick fix that offers states the flexibility to use federal pandemic relief dollars for their own particular extensions, particularly in states where the official unemployment rate is still high. A big part of the problem is we can’t trust the official or spun unemployment numbers since they fail to consider all factors. These might be the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers as shown by the St. Louis Fed …
But economist John Williams’ ShadowStats and others factor in “… [the] U-6 unemployment rate [or] the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.” That doesn’t look good at over 25 percent (that’s five times the official rate) …
Out of everyone else, Black unemployment, according to the Economic Policy Institute, remains - stubbornly - the highest of all racial demographics. Black workers and those eligible for work just can never seem to catch a break and society seems irritatingly comfortable with keeping it that way …
Here’s EPI’s Elise Gould …
Policymakers will use Labor Day to tout union success on issues such as worker wages and paid time off, but in a time of rising poverty and unlivable income, this will seem inappropriate and tone deaf - especially as most policymakers are on vacation. Congress presently enjoys a bountiful 7-week vacation with a very generous six-figure salary for non-performance in the middle of a crisis. States, especially red ones, will continue playing playing fire with COVID protocols and assorted emergency relief packages. Everyone is pushing for the unemployed to return back to work since, on paper, job openings outpace the number of jobless …
But, what’s not happening is the sorely needed reevaluation and recalibration of the American workplace and work landscape. Workers can’t work on unlivable wages if rents are rising astronomically and a “hot” “flippable-house”-driven real estate market puts housing out of reach for those on low income. Parents can’t work if daycares are closed or wait lists are too long and schools are back and forth from day-to-day on whether to close from daily infections or not. Employees can’t be productive if they’re hungry from rising food insecurity, perpetually worried about paying basic bills or unable to properly raise families (also an expectation) when bosses are inflexible on schedule, unwilling to push for workplace COVID protections or don’t want to pay what workers are worth or enough to meet the living standards of the region where they’re located. What sense does any of this make? There’s no indication that anyone is moving to or willing to make the necessary and dramatic changes in an economy that has already proven itself as lacking resiliency. The solutions are there. When do we apply them? We need to sort this out.