At 40 hours/week, $17.50/hour is $36,400 for 52 weeks. It's arguably more than a pittance, but it's only 1.3x the federal poverty level for a family of 4. It also effectively sets a $17.50 price floor on labor for anyone who is eligible for the PUA program.
I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing. Employers would have to raise wages and raise prices a bit to compensate. I have seen a handful of papers with evidence that price increases are generally a lot smaller than minimum wage increases, so I'm not worried about it just turning into inflation. But I am not an economist so I don't want to make claims that I can't back up.
If you use https://uid.dli.mt.gov/claimants/benefits-estimator to estimate your benefit for $40k/yr ($10k/qtr) you get $400/week, so with the extra PUA program it's $700/week.
$400/week is $10/hour. $700/week is $17.50/hour.
At 40 hours/week, $17.50/hour is $36,400 for 52 weeks. It's arguably more than a pittance, but it's only 1.3x the federal poverty level for a family of 4. It also effectively sets a $17.50 price floor on labor for anyone who is eligible for the PUA program.
I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing. Employers would have to raise wages and raise prices a bit to compensate. I have seen a handful of papers with evidence that price increases are generally a lot smaller than minimum wage increases, so I'm not worried about it just turning into inflation. But I am not an economist so I don't want to make claims that I can't back up.