Two states end federal COVID unemployment benefit in urge to get people back to work
Montana was the first state to say “no thanks” to the $300 a month in federal supplemental unemployment insurance last week, and South Carolina followed on Thursday.
Extended benefits will end in June in both states, and Montana will entice its residents to go back to work with a one-time incentive of $1,200, according to Forbes.
The federal extension of the payment lasts until Sept. 6 — past Labor Day and through the busy summer tourist season in Mississippi and other states.
Coast employers who are holding job fairs and posting help wanted signs say some people apply for jobs to be able to continue to collect the unemployment benefits, then don’t show up for interviews.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week it is “not clear” that federal extended unemployment benefits were causing a labor shortage, but he doesn’t expect the extended unemployment to continue past September.
The April jobs report released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows unemployment stayed relatively unchanged at 6.1%, despite business owners across the country saying they can’t find workers among the millions unemployed.
Short-term unemployment of less than five weeks increased by 237,000 to 2.4 million in April.
Long-term unemployment among those jobless for 27 weeks or more accounted for 43% of the total in April, according to the jobs report.
“One clear takeaway across partisan lines was a need for caution in interpretation,” the Associated Press reported. “A single monthly report can be volatile. The three-month average of job gains is still a healthy 524,000.”
In Mississippi, the maximum unemployment benefit is $235 a week for a maximum of 26 weeks, without the extended benefits.
Add the $300 weekly bonus payment from the federal government and it is equivalent to $13.38 a hour for a 40-hour week, more than many hospitality workers make on the job, but without health insurance or other benefits.
Unemployment rates reported in June are: adult men (6.1%) adult women (5.6%), teenagers (12.3%), Whites (5.3%), Blacks (9.7%), Asians (5.7%), and Hispanics (7.9 ) showed little or no change in April.
Economists had expected gains of close to 1 million jobs but instead the economy added just 266,000 in April, “making this the biggest miss, relative to expectations, in decades,” according to Friday’s Axios AM Thought Bubble.
The bottom line, according to Axios: “While it’s possible that April’s jobs report might yet be revised upwards, this number proves that economics is not a science and that America’s pandemic recovery is going to be rocky.”
