Is Unemployment Bonus Keeping Workers on Sideline?
Despite a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 6.1% in April — representing 9.8 million people who say they are actively looking for work — many employers are reporting that they can’t find people to hire.
Republicans say the $300 a week supplement to unemployment insurance, which for many Americans amounts to a pay raise, is so generous that it is acting as a disincentive for people to return to work.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, dismisses that suggestion, saying on May 10, “we don’t see much evidence of that.”
“Americans want to work,” Biden said. “I think the people who claim Americans won’t work even if they find a good and fair opportunity underestimate the American people.”
After the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a disappointing gain of 266,000 jobs in April, a reporter asked Biden if the enhanced unemployment benefits were “diminishing a return to work in some categories.”
“No, nothing measurable,” Biden said on May 7.
Biden and others in his administration argue there are other bigger drivers of labor shortages — such as access to child care (made worse by remote schooling) and the fact that most people still were not vaccinated against COVID-19 when the April jobs surveys were performed.
Republicans say Biden is ignoring the obvious.
At a recent county tour stop in Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst said she “heard from a number of small business owners that were very concerned about getting
