1ºThey should have done it long time ago ! We live in a different times ! If someone has a car , insurance they could do Uber , Lyft so many other jobs for the extra income . That 300 extra a a week it’s hurting our economy! People where getting that money and making more on unemployment then someone working 40 hours . Come on people get back to work ! We can’t use pandemic as an excuse for everything ! Guess what when I got laid off in 2014 Florida refused to give me unemployment for 6 months because I had a package from my employer, then when they finally gave it time to me I was only granted 4 months $275 a week . Now because of the pandemic people are cashing big time !
2ºI keep seeing these articles about state ending the extra unemployment, yet none of them point out the current unemployment rates. Maryland is at 6.2, nationally we are only at 6.5. To put this into perspective the unemployment rate in January of 2010 at the height of the recession was 8.1. The only reason businesses are still booming and looking for more help instead of completely contracting like they did in 2009-2010 is those extra benefits and stimulus money that we’ve been getting so that people can still spend money on things past the bare necessities. To further give some perspective the max you can qualify for in Maryland is $430/week, plus the $300 that gives you a total of only $2920 per month. I know that sounds like a lot to some of you who may be from the Midwest or cheaper areas, but we are talking about the 7th most expensive state to live in. It’s easy to fall into the politics here. It’s easy to fight red and blue. At the end of the day we are all Americans and we all just went through a trauma, one that will be exacerbated if people start losing their homes because politicians are more interested in riling up their base than actually coming up with solutions.
3ºWelcome to trumps poorly educated third world of america.
The Biden administration-backed American Rescue Plan extended the pandemic jobless aid that provides a weekly additional $300 until September. The stimulus plan also extended the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for the self-, and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program that funds benefits after individuals have exhausted their state benefits
During the pandemic, companies like Amazon that pay at least $15 an hour and offer health insurance have been able to hire hundreds of thousands of workers for often grueling jobs.
The average weekly earnings of nonsupervisory workers in the leisure and hospitality sector work out to making $20,628 per year.
In regard to the worker shortage narrative, the Labor Department actually announced that 331,000 jobs were added last month in leisure and hospitality, more than any other sector.
Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute, said health concerns and child care responsibilities seem to be the main reasons holding workers back.
In April, she said, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings.
Recent layoffs (workers unemployed for less than 5 weeks) is still at 2.4 million, suggesting that layoffs are still happening and labor demand isn’t as strong as the anecdotes suggest
"When we want to encourage rich people to do something, we give them money. But when we want to encourage low income people...we take their money away. You can't have it both ways," Dorothy Brown says of GOP governors ending federal unemployment benefits.
Several states announced that they would end the pandemic programs before the official expiry in September, including Montana, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and North Dakota.
All of these states except Mississippi have a lower unemployment rate than the national average as of March, according to government data
South Carolina’s own labor department projects that McMaster’s decision will lead to the state losing roughly $600 million in federal assistance. It estimates that if half of people on unemployment go back to work—the best case scenario contemplated in the memo—they’ll only earn $372 million in wages by the time the extra unemployment expires. Those wages, of course, will be paid by employers, not the federal government.
A separate report, published in August and updated two months ago, found that total spending in 15 Illinois counties declined by 5% when federal benefits were cut to $300.
The US economy runs on consumer spending and every dollar in every wallets counts.