Re:U.S. adds just 266,000 jobs in April, far below expectations
by colejohnson66 on Friday May 07, 2021 @12:16PM
(#27077491)
I think the generous unemployment benefits just exposed how little minimum wage people are paid. Many minimum wage people were being laid off, so they went for unemployment benefits. But those weren’t enough (because the jobs were barely paying enough). Enough people were finally complaining about their wages that politicians decided to just give everyone extra unemployment benefit money.
If the extra unemployment benefits from the CARES Act was just changing the unemployment pay to 100% your prior pay, it wouldn’t’ve been as big an issue. But for someone making $300 a week could possibly get $800 through unemployment (~$200 for unemployment plus $600 “bonus”).
The CARES Act suspending the “search for work” requirement didn’t help either. It was necessary at the time as there were no jobs available, but I think it is definitely time to reevaluate that. It encourages people to not go back when the business opens up because they’ll not only have to go back to work, but they’ll be making less.
From what I see around me there a huge number of unfilled jobs because people are making more money from unemployment than from jobs.
Yes, the job could pay more, but that has its own set of pros and cons. It's almost acting like a backdoor minimum wage, but worse, because some people would rather make a bit less and not work at all. (I'm not saying that's you - I'm talking in generalities here.)