Political Crossfire Forums

I'd be interested in actually reading the paper, since obviously it depends on how they were able to determine that people went back to work because of a lack of benefits, rather than the economic recovery.

it says how they determined it in the syllabus. i'd say you could pay the 5 bucks but you can't even afford a mic

The thing about unemployment is that your weekly benefit amount is calculated based on what you were earning for previous year or so before becoming unemployed. It varies from state to state but is somewhere in the range of 50% of what you were earning (up to a point, if you were making 500k and lost your job, unemployment isn't going to give you 250k). So, if you were making $1000 a week and got laid off, your unemployment check would be about $500 a week (thats near the max of how much you can be eligible for). Now, if there's a low wage job available that would make $300 a week, you'd be better of remaining unemployed. This is a bad incentive. If you turn down work, you're technically ineligible (though in many cases the state would have no way of knowing you turned down a job), so to avoid these situations, people are very selective about which jobs they look into, only seeking out ones that pay more than their unemployment benefit.

When I interned for the state department of labor, they would allow people to claim "partial unemployment" which means they had a part time job, maybe 15 hours a week, and then received a reduced portion of their benefit check on top of their income. The problem with that is, you could be making 400 dollars a week working 15 hours and still get a partial benefit, but if you were working 40 hours a week for 300 dollars, you were cut off from the benefits. I'd like to see some system where you can still get a partial benefit if you're working full time but the job is a major step down in terms of pay.

A very imperfect system. When the economy is bad, unemployment benefits are very important not only for individuals but also for economic stimulus, so I don't want to gut the whole thing, but it could be improved.

during the same time period number of people on disability went way up too, just sayin'.

OK. Is this study saying that removing the benefits of staying unemployed led to more people going back to work? I can't say I'm surprised.

Though, I'd also assume that it would lead to more people on welfare-type programs, too.

Yay another thinly-veiled attempt to screw unemployed people by fake "tough love" measures. Because helping them is of course enabling them.

It just never stops.