Since its creation almost a century ago, America’s safety net has not kept pace with the changing economy. Reforming the Unemployment Insurance program is a case in point. Created in 1935, this essential component of the safety net, which provides a basic level of financial assistance to workers who lose their jobs through no fault … Continue reading
Even as nearly 17 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits in the past three weeks — a record high, by far — millions of people appear to be falling through the cracks. They can’t get through jammed phone systems or finish their applications on overloaded websites. Or they’re confused about whether or how to apply. … Continue reading
Google said it has created an application portal to help New York State respond to an unprecedented surge in unemployment filings after the economy was shut down by the coronavirus outbreak. The effort, called “Tech Surge”, is a partnership with Google Cloud, Deloitte, and Verizon to improve the reliability of the state’s online and telephone-based … Continue reading
On top of ventilators, face masks and health care workers, you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic. In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy has put out a call for volunteers who know how to code the decades-old computer programming language called … Continue reading
WHAT HAS CONGRESS ALREADY DONE TO ADDRESS THE CURRENT CRISIS? The CARES Act—a $2 trillion relief package aimed at alleviating the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic—extends the duration of UI benefits by 13 weeks and increases payments by $600 per week through July 31st. This implies that maximum UI benefits will exceed 90 percent … Continue reading
KEY TAKEAWAYS Social-distancing policies to slow the transmission of coronavirus have disrupted economic activity, shuttering firms and throwing many Americans out of work. Providing more generous unemployment insurance benefits to laid-off and furloughed workers can be an efficient, targeted means to help offset their loss of income. Small business loans aimed at keeping workers on … Continue reading
The federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system pays temporary partial earnings replacement to involuntarily unemployed applicants while they are actively seeking reemployment. The UI system is an automatic stabilizer for state economies, injecting spending from benefit payments quickly in economic downturns, and withdrawing spending during business recoveries because of fewer beneficiaries and higher tax contributions. There … Continue reading
In the week ending April 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 192,000, a decrease of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised level. This is the lowest level for initial claims since September 6, 1969 when it was 182,000. The previous week’s level was revised up by 1,000 from 196,000 to 197,000. … Continue reading
A key question in labor market research is how the unemployment insurance system affects unemployment rates and labor market dynamics. A new IZA Discussion Paper by Benjamin Hartung, Philip Jung and Moritz Kuhn revisits this old question studying the German Hartz reforms. The study traces the German labor market miracle back to the reform of … Continue reading
The Employment Service-Unemployment Insurance (ES-UI) partnership is rooted in permanent authorizing statutes, an identical fund source, common rules for state administration, and interdependent practices to guard against improper payments and expose claimants to suitable job openings. This partnership is central to the success of the public workforce system. Over the past several decades, USDOL has … Continue reading
Some researchers and policymakers have reasonably worried that generous UI could discourage serious job search and raise workers’ wage demands unrealistically (an instance of what economists call “moral hazard”), thereby slowing the overall labor market recovery. To be clear, most labor economists do not share the worry that unemployment is increased much by UI. But … Continue reading
Gabriel Chodorow-Reich of Harvard University and Loukas Karabarbounis of the University of Chicago find that the extension of unemployment benefits from 26 to 99 weeks during the Great Recession increased the unemployment rate by at most 0.3 percentage point. In addition, they find little effect of jobless benefit extensions on state-level macroeconomic variables such as vacancies … Continue reading
The implementation of a European unemployment insurance system could begin with the creation of a eurozone budget; a time-consuming but popular idea, according to the French Council of Economic Analysis. The idea of a common system of unemployment insurance within the eurozone is taking off. The need to strengthen the budgetary policy of the single … Continue reading
The President’s proposal contains three core elements: Protecting Workers with Wage Insurance: The President’s plan would ensure workers have access to wage insurance that would replace half of lost wages, up to $10,000 over two years. Displaced workers making less than $50,000 who were with their prior employer for at least three years would be … Continue reading
The Employment Insurance Operating Account was created on 1 January 2009. It is a consolidated specific purpose account, meaning that it includes program-related revenues credited and expenses charged to this account under the Employment Insurance Act.8 EI premiums are paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), which includes general government revenues such as taxes,9 and … Continue reading