If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive, then it's an obvious choice. It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed.
Yeah honestly it's a bit wild to me that this is a controversial take, and the proposals to "solve" this problem have largely been to cut people off from benefits.
Suddenly workers have leverage and corps don't know what to do about it. That's why I think a UBI would be a good idea. It would give leverage to individual workers without a union, now that unions are so weak.
The moderation on HackerNews has gotten worse over the last five years. Reflexive downvoting for simple disagreement without the effort of a written response is the go-to short circuited brain-dead, ideological response I came to HN to avoid. Now down vote this as off-topic.
I wonder if somewhat incorrectly calling it a benefit is part of the reason it's so controversial. It's insurance, not a handout. Are people not going to call their car insurance if in a wreck? Are people not going to use their home insurance if someone breaks in and robs some expensive item? Use what you pay for, people! This goes for public utilities. Go to your library. Call your representative. Sign up for food stamps. Demand better roads. This is your stuff you pay for.
The parent wants it both ways: the connotation of entitlement in collecting a product that was paid for (by calling it "insurance"), but without actually paying for it.
But I think it's reasonable to assume (though I'd be interested in a study on this), that over a lifetime a person will have paid for all of its unemployment benefits.
You can't be on unemployment forever, and you can't just go on it year over year, because there is a minimum amount of wage/work-hour you'll need to meet to be able to go back on unemployment if you're laid off again and have expired your allocated benefits (as I understand).
That means that any worker going on unemployment can only get so much benefits per amount of time working or wages accrued.
That's why I think over a lifetime, most people pay-back all of their benefits.
The answer to the question makes it clear that the money is a disincentive to work, which is not what the 'insurance' is for.
It's not a pool you pay into and claim from 'because you can' - you claim it 'if you must'.
If someone claimed insurance 'because they could, not because they must' in most scenarios we'd call it fraud.
So yes - collect if you must, but then the answer to the question should be 0% for those implying that the benefit is a disincentive to return to work.
Of course being laid off is a must. The question is how long, before you find a new job, does it remain a must? An individual's reasons for passing on a new job sometimes stretch the idea of "must".
Would you take any job even if it pays less and has worse conditions then the one your were laid off from?
Would you take any job no matter what? Even it it has terrible work conditions and doesn't even pay as much as your employment insurance?
Would you take any job that pays more then your current unemployment even if it doesn't interest you in the slightest or seems to have bad conditions?
Would you take any job that seems a good fit for you long term, that interests you, seem to offer conditions you find reasonable, and pays better than your current unemployment?
Would you take the opportunity to train yourself in something new so that you can find work in new domains that might pay better and have less chance of being laid off again in the future?
Which of these would you consider "cheating" the unemployment insurance and which would you say is "in the spirit" of what it's suppose to afford you as a person recently laid off?
Also, on the topic of how long, the benefits in most state end after around 26 weeks, so there is a hard cut off that was chosen for some reason. I guess you could argue to make it shorter or longer, but I think that needs answering my previous question about what is "in spirit" and what isn't so we can set the right length of time given that.
Being laid off is a reasonable basis for claiming unemployment benefits for a short time—long enough to find another job. It's not a reason to stay on unemployment indefinitely when there are jobs available comparable to the one you had before.
The United States is a cruel place to live if you’re poor. Businesses think they are entitled to desperate labor at rock bottom prices, and a large part of the country’s leadership is happy to help.
And yet university enrollment is down 25% at my local uni. If you’re poor and have nothing to do for months and aren’t making your labor worth more by gaining skills, why should people have sympathy. Are people born entitled to live off society without contributing if they can?
>Are people born entitled to live off society without contributing if they can?
If that is what the current state of society demands. Yes, absolutely. We could change it but there is a reason why things are the way they are and they have absolutely nothing to do with calm and rational thinking.
> And yet university enrollment is down 25% at my local uni. If you’re poor and have nothing to do for months and aren’t making your labor worth more by gaining skills, why should people have sympathy
Doesn't that mean taking on serious debt? Maybe people are reluctant to do that in a difficult economic situation. Not to mention there are other ways to gain skills other than going to a university.
It doesn’t mean that the job pays less, it just means it doesn’t pay to sufficiently provide an incentive to take it.
People simply might not take what is likely a physically demanding job if the compensation isn’t sufficiently high.
There can be also other reasons like the fact that they might be looking for a better opportunity and not simply taking on any job.
Other things like the hidden cost of having a job which can include things like commuting costs, loss of other employment opportunities like part time jobs or side gigs or added costs due to having to pay for child care can also be a good reason why one might not take a job even if it does pay above minimum wage and even above the local living wage.
> If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive
Unemployment benefits are designed to pay less than what people earned during their recent employment. Traditionally, it wouldn't make sense for someone to turn down a job offer in favor of unemployment unless the new job offer had drastically lower compensation than their previous job.
The pandemic unemployment assistance change this with additional $300/week payments, but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations.
This isn't really about jobs not paying people enough to survive. The survey responses included "I receive enough money from unemployment insurance without having to work" and a separate response for "I was not given enough money to return to work" with similar response rates.
> but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations
But that's assuming someone would be working full time, right? When I was working on a restaurant (as dishwasher), I wouldn't get more than 20 hours in a week, usually around 15 hours iirc
This is a bit of a strawman. There are a lot of factors influencing the decision on both sides. That $2500 will leave a gap in your resume, both literally and from an experience perspective. The $3000 on the other hand ignores a ton of externalities: Cost of commuting, childcare, etc. plus the associated hours. In a real sense it could be $2500 a month raising your kids, or $1500 a month in real income after childcare/commuting for 50 hours all in.
A business has a number of levers to pull if they want to suppress wages; outsourcing (nationally and internationally) is usually the primary means. How do you suggest we increase the value of people's time without the Government setting the floor? (not to say the Government is the only way - just 'A' way).
A lot of the jobs in question don't care about resume gaps (especially during a pandemic) and are not outsourceable. For instance, restaurant, customer service, and retail is hard-hit right now. (I am in this line of work). You cant hire someone in Bangladesh to work those jobs, and you don't care if they were unemployed last year.
But it's also impossible to pay them $10k a month. It's literally not mathematically possible. It's not a case of greed. The profit margins simply aren't fat enough. Around me, they're paying $15 to $16 an hour which is pretty generous and about what I'm making right now.
At the end of the day, there is a huge shortage of labor. We know this because the workforce participation rate is at multidecade record lows. You can tell employers just to pay more, but it's not going to solve the fundamental issue. That's like trying to resolve the housing crisis by telling home shoppers to simply pay more and then wringing your hands of it.
Funny that all the news articles I read where a restaurant or business increases their starting wage to north of $13/hour, they get thousands of applicants.
I think it's amazing that all the free market advocates don't want a free market for labor. If employers want more employees, they simply have to pay more.
Workforce participation is at a low because workers in low paying jobs have looked around and realized their jobs suck, are low paying, and are looking to change to a better career.
> … "and are looking to change to a better career."
Lotta folks done or are in process of exactly that. I know folks who learned or improved various computer skills during the lockdown time and now have zero plans of goin' back to their crappy job from before.
If you file for unemployment in my state right now, you'll get around $650 every week. Some states such as Massachusetts were paying as much as $1800 weekly with the federal bonus added in.
Even that's pretty generous; average monthly wage for $15/h is about $2600. So the marginal income is as low as $100 for 40 hours of work in places with the highest minimum wage. Combined with the fact that the poll sums to over 130%, a significant number of respondents had multiple reasons to turn down work, this story is a bit of a nothingburger.
The government has neither the means nor desire to push the price to infinity. It normally pays starvation wages and for another 6 weeks will continue to pay a barely livable wage before returning to starvation wages.
Most the jobs they can't fill are 24 hours per week 8-12 bucks an hour slog fests for the not so princely sum of 800-1200 whereas people are getting paid 2500 in unemployment benefits NOT full time jobs paying substantially more than unemployment.
As an employee making 15.60 what precisely is your concern with any temporary distortion of the price of low wage labor? I don't see how you could lose exactly?
Also, don't know if it's still going on now but when all these extra federal unemployment payments started, they were an extra $600 per week no matter how much state unemployment you qualified for. So, e.g. if you were a student who worked 10 hr/week part time, you received an extra $600/wk on top of your state money (which wouldn't be much because you worked so few hours).
Unemployment insurance was a godsend for desperate full-time service workers who lost their jobs in the pandemic, but it was also an insane boondoggle for part timers.
The 'obvious choice' is to not take money from the government/community that you're not supposed to be taking.
How on earth did we just just dropped all pretense at being civic?
And also: "It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed."
That's actually not obvious. Have you owned a small business? Like a cafe, especially through a pandemic? Do they just have magic pools of profit from which to pay people more? Some places do, but usually they're the big chains. These kinds of situations just push regular owners further downhill vis-a-vis the Starbucks down the street which some might argue is 'good for efficiency' but I'd argue that we lose in choice and authenticity quite a lot.
If labor is 30% of your costs then you could pay 20% more by charging 6% more for your finished goods or services. For a lot of such companies you could fill those labor hours trivially by making existing staff full time drastically increasing their wages and their financial stability.
Take a fake employee named Susan. Presently you pay her $12 an hour for an average of 24 hours per week. In a normal month Susan receives 4 weekly paychecks for a grand total of 1152 before taxes or deductions with which to pay per bills.
Susan is serving you a plate of food for $15
Now imagine you raised her wages to $14.40 and offered her full time. Her wages are now 2304. She is making twice as much money and now the food sadly must cost... $15.90.
But you say Susan doesn't want to work full time she has other responsibilities, other jobs for example!
This is because you and your industry have specialized in each paying Susan to run around between her 2-3 jobs so she can afford to live so she can get enough hours to live without any of you having to pay benefits. It could also be because your industry pays too little for anyone to afford to live so you have collected workers who have lesser need because for example they are spouses of well paid workers earning supplemental income. As the cost of living rises faster than incomes this isn't a stable equilibrium. Even Sam spare time may find he needs to earn more to live and if Sam moves on to a real job, graduates college, moves out of his parents home etc you can't be sure you can replace him at your less than survival wage.
The service industry isn't a benefit to America its a diseased kidney and if the entire industry as it is died not much of value would be lost.
"companies you could fill those labor hours trivially by making existing staff full time drastically increasing their wages" ?
So the company will 'trivially' have 2x more revenue to be able to offer everyone full time jobs?
While raising prices by 'only 6%' - you understand how Supply and Demand works?
You are the one paying for those services. If you were willing to pay any material amount more, there'd be higher wages.
In addition to Supply and Demand you have 'competitiveness' - service industries run on razor thin margins not by choice (!!), it's the nature of competition.
By having tons of illegal workers, willing to work for less, you guarantee lower wages.
The #1 driver of low wages in America is essentially illegal migration, which is encouraged by the same people who want higher wages.
But all of this is moot: It's immoral (and probably illegal) to collect unemployment benefits if you can be working. In addition, smaller service industry companies cannot afford to pay substantially more, and they will be hit much harder by 'worker subsidies' than Starbucks across the street who will put them out of business.
I'm sorry you haven't thought this through. The service industry isn't fully staffed and manifestly makes use of a large portion of part time labor. If are able to staff 100 hours of labor per week of part time labor but need 160 you can indeed make up the difference by converting some of your part time labor into full time labor. This doesn't require earning twice as much revenue because we are talking about filling existing labor shortfalls which is to say hours you would staff tomorrow if you could hire the bodies. We are merely talking about increasing the hours of your existing labor instead of lamenting that nobody else wants to work for so little per month that you cannot rent an apartment with all of your wages.
Supply and demand pushes a market towards an equilibrium state it isn't gravity the market is still made up of human choices. It doesn't constrain you to a specific set of decisions. Don't base your argument on economics if you don't understand economics.
Just because you have chosen to value a labor hour at $11 an hour and a burger at $14.99 doesn't mean its fate. You CAN pay more and you can charge more and because wages aren't most of your labor costs the price doesn't rise linearly with the cost of labor.
This is also complete bubkis
"The #1 driver of low wages in America is essentially illegal migration, which is encouraged by the same people who want higher wages."
'Offering more hours' to part time workers, as opposed to 'hiring more workers' , as a proposed solution to a problem that is essentially global (and perennial) has to be one of the most glib proposals I've read in a long while.
Millions of managers and CEOs will be ever grateful for that deep insight they couldn't otherwise fathom themselves ... if only they could read HN!
Or maybe we can assume 'They Have Thought of That' and that it's a dynamic already in play. Obviously.
"Supply and demand ... It doesn't constrain you to a specific set of decisions. Don't base your argument on economics if you don't understand economics."
If you understood economics, you would realize they fundamentally constrains your choices. They are literally 'the biggest constraints'.
Small businesses are competitive, and generally keenly aware of what their margins and pricing pressures are. If they could magically create worker stability with a simple price increase -> wage increase function, they'd do it.
Raising prices by 6% across the board is not a solution to anything, it's just inflationary.
FYI California has 3 million illegal aliens [1]. That's about 8% of the population. If you consider that they have no benefits, are slightly younger, they're more likely to be working, that's a 'very solid and probably greater than 12% of the labour market'. Given that they are likely in the lower income bracket, it's probably well more than 20% of working class jobs.
That's a massive proportion and it will fundamentally affect prices for everything.
California's wealth is derived as much from illegal labour practices, paying illegal wages, and illegally not providing worker benefits.
The surpluses go into the pockets of every Californian in the form of cheap prices all the way through the value chain.
A solution could be to work very hard to ensure that every business was ruthlessly enforcing labour standards, wages, conditions and benefits. But that would price those illegal workers out of the market (the only reason they are employed is because they are very inexpensive) and they'd likely have to return home - or be permanent wards of the state. Hence the giant and obvious hypocritical paradox of the California economy.
The situation I've described would involve raising prices 6% and doubling the money many workers actually earn. Inflation wont rob this workers of these gains.
Nobody is interested in you proving that minimum wage is the primary force driving down pay by virtue of you making up the numbers for what portion of the labor force immigrants make up and then concluding since its a really big number of workers it MUST have the effect you describe and then busting out the wikipedia entry on illegal immigration.
This isn't moving the discussion forward.
If you want to avoid a billion businesses paying shitty wages for mostly unnecessarily part time jobs the path forward is simple.
Increase minimum wage and make it a function of total dollars AND hourly. The greater of 600 per week or 15 per hour. Make it expensive to rely on part timers. Meanwhile we can make benefits especially health benefits not the employers problem by rolling out universal health care.
Everyone's costs WILL go up but they will go up evenly and if we end up with a few less Taco bells the world will probably be a better not a worse place.
> If labor is 30% of your costs then you could pay 20% more by charging 6% more for your finished goods or services.
right, businesses are all malign and evil, and they could raise their prices by 6% (without losing any business), but they just haven't, because they prefer to... have an excuse to pay less?
> But you say Susan doesn't want to work full time she has other responsibilities, other jobs for example!
any of my staff who didn't want to work full-time usually wanted to spend more time with their kids. or take classes.
> right, businesses are all malign and evil, and they could raise their prices by 6% (without losing any business), but they just haven't, because they prefer to... have an excuse to pay less?
Let's assume that the reason you'd supposedly lose business with higher prices is due to competition not raising their prices. If you're struggling to find workers such that you have to raise prices to cover better wages, then it stands to reason your competitors are in the same boat, so either they keep struggling due to lack of labor or they raise their prices to match. Alternatively, they have a much more efficient business than you and you should go under anyway. Nobody owes you a successful business.
Now let's assume that the reason you'd supposedly lose business with higher prices is due to people not being willing to pay that much for your product. Well, if your business revenue can't even afford to pay the labor that keeps it running than your business is a failure and should go under. Nobody owes you a successful business.
I absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that the purpose of society should be to ensure there are enough desperate people to fill labor positions for untenable businesses.
"I absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that the purpose of society"
Your moral impetus isn't an important factor in trying to understand underlying dynamic of the situation.
There's a basic operating competitive dynamic going in small business & services that is almost as old as time, or at least it goes back to even before antiquity before we even had the language to describe the economics of it all.
Huge swaths of the economy operate on this basis.
Most small business owners are not particularly rich, and if you add up the risk premium they take on, they're probably not that far ahead at all, if at all.
Wages are what they are due to input costs (including labour) beyond their control.
They have no market power and they are 'price takers' not 'price setters'.
There's generally no situation in which they can magically raise wages and give longer hours as the OP fantasized.
The only thing they can do is hope to be especially prudent, intelligent, conscientious and of course lucky.
Larger entities & chains (i.e. Starbucks) probably could raise wages a bit. Regulations such as minimum wage will obviously have an affect but have side effects. And of course large pools of illegal migrants who's presence hugely skews the above board market for labour (this is major factor in Texas and Cali).
> Your moral impetus isn't an important factor in trying to understand underlying dynamic of the situation.
No, but I read the implication of all this whining about business having small margins and not being able to find workers as a call to action to, well, intentionally make people's situation more desperate so they'll work shitty jobs for shitty pay so these business owners can make more money.
> Most small business owners are not particularly rich, and if you add up the risk premium they take on, they're probably not that far ahead at all, if at all.
How is this my problem? They started a business, they accepted the risk, it's their problem.
They are in a local equilibrium where changing it even in a fashion that would be beneficial to all would risk of loss. Some will avoid risk even when increasing loss for doing nothing is all but sure. People will continue to pay too little to obtain workers losing more money as their number and quality of workers declines while demanding cuts to benefits like food, childcare, and health which are often the only way most of their workers can possibly afford to work there AND eat and live indoors.
If allowed they will continue to do this until they go out of business then insist that the government destroyed their business. Then the banks will lend more money to the next round of idiots who will happily do the same.
Don't know what to tell ya; I wont be running into town to grab a pic for you. Local McDonald's is currently advertising on a big sign $17/hr with vacation time. My kid reported that another fast food shop in town is now to $20/hr. I was talking with a roofer a bit north of me two weeks ago. His starting pay is also $20/hr and he can't get anyone. Anyone. He is now down to just himself because he can't get folks.
This is a good thing. It means employees have an option to chose work that’s good for them, and can reject jobs that would demand unbearable sacrifice with little reward. It allows folks who would otherwise never get a chance to breathe to learn new skills and compete for better work. I don’t want to live in a society where 2 million jobs are taken only on threat of starvation.
This is not a good thing. The government (funded by tax payers who work and produce) is paying people while they are not producing to the economy. Someone pays for this, through taxes and lowered value of the dollar/purchase power for those who do work. There is no free lunch.
Also - you say 2 million is OK... what if it were 20 mil, 200 mil who got paid while not working. Who would pay for this?
> The government (funded by tax payers who work and produce) is paying people
Well, the workers who are now unemployed paid these taxes when they were employed. So no, it was not free. It works like insurance. Having insurance is a good thing. I agree it should not encourage people to not work forever, but it is not like unemployment benefits are generous. They are bare bones payments.
Let me rephrase: this is a good thing as long as production is meeting or exceeding demand.
When it becomes clear that there aren't enough hands on deck (or at desks, or in factories) to "keep the lights on" then we can say there's a problem.
Until then, it's good for people to have more financial independence and be able to find a job that doesn't treat them like cattle.
As you mention, this breaks down when you take it to an extreme (eg. 200 mil). But that's not where we are and nor is it where we're headed so I don't see the equivalence.
The first: For the past several months, I've been feeling the effects of supply chain disruptions in my normal purchases of consumer goods. Employment and production fell through the floor while demand in various things went through the roof. From that alone, I'd say we're approaching, if not already in the early stages of not enough hands on deck.
The second: I am probably misuing the word, but for lack of knowing a better one, I'd say there is a hysteresis between policy and other inputs which shape employment and production levels, and how acutely the positive and negative effects of employment and production levels are felt by the population, and the shape of this hysteresis curve is not well understood or characterized. That is to say, economic policy could be set such that production in fact will not meet or exceed demand, but the economy will not reach that state for a while, and we'll have a period where things seem to be just fine, until all of a sudden, holy shit, they're not, what the hell happened. So when inflation has been relatively steady over the past several years, and now over the past months we find ourselves in an increasing rise, perhaps we should start paying attention now, while policy inputs that are less likely to overshoot us into deflation are still an option.
They might not be producing, but they are consuming, which I would argue is more important. The amount of labor it takes to produce a product has gone down orders of magnitude with modern technology, the efficiency of capitalism is eliminating human labor as fast as it can.
Unemployment is not funded by your income or sales tax, there is a levy taken from employers as people are working.
> The U.S. Department of Labor’s Unemployment Insurance program is funded through unemployment insurance taxes paid by employers and collected by the state and federal government. The taxes are part of the often-discussed payroll taxes all employers pay
And in order to claim from it, you must have had enough contribution to it yourself, indirectly through your prior employers.
The amount you receive from it is then proportional to how much you've indirectly contributed to it.
Edit: Okay, to be fair there is a small amount that is indirectly paid from taxpayer, that's because employers who pay on time get a small tax break themselves, so indirectly it means the government budget will need to ask more of other taxpayers since those employers get a small break:
> Employers pay federal taxes of 6 percent on the first $7,000 in annual income earned by every employee. Employers who pay on time get a tax break at 5.4 percent
But this is pretty minimal, and it's in the form of a tax deduction.
Edit2: Also, at a higher level, it isn't unreasonable to argue that technological advancement and the overall increase in production efficiency and productivity gains could go towards allowing a certain amount of people not to work at all, and others to work less. You just need to change your perspective from thinking that people are motivated to work only from loss, and that actually a lot of people would be motivated to work from gains. For example, instead of thinking people only work in order not to starve, you can start to think people would work in order to afford better quality food. Or that instead of working for not getting rained on, people would be motivated to work for affording a much bigger home with a bigger tv, and a pool.
You can tell that many people are actually motivated to work for these added gains, look at how many rich millionaires and billionaires still work full work weeks.
So for this, the question would be, did we make enough progress in efficiency and productivity that we could have all work be motivated from gains, and no longer need any of it be motivated from loss?
This system can then be constantly adjusted to the current levels of efficiency and productivity and what it can afford.
So the idea is you'd see how much of the negative incentives you can eliminate for work.
Can we avoid having anyone forced to work because if they didn't they would die? Can we avoid having anyone forced to work because if they didn't they'd be homeless? Etc.
Obviously, I'm Canadian, and so you'll see that I'm biased in this model, since it's somewhat the Canadian model. But I'll give an example of the tuning, because you can tune this to quite the granular levels if needed. Universal healthcare for example is a way to say: Can we avoid having anyone forced to work because if they didn't they would die from disease or injury or old age? And the granular tuning allows us to even do things like make it dependent on the specific disease, injury, etc. You can do that by tweaking what gets covered and to what extent. Maybe we can't afford to treat fully people to really expensive treatment, and so these people would still be forced to find ways to pay for it and thus work. Etc.
The problem is the extra federal payment on top of state UI and the extended benefit period. Those aren’t connected to income or employer unemployment insurance premiums.
Yes. They are the subject of this thread because they are a significant portion of the unemployment lower-to-middle income employees receive. They are worth discussing because, as you note, part of their goal is to avoid a protracted economic recovery, but they are having a counterproductive side effect.
We spend around 800 billion in tax dollars every year for imperialism. Yet so many people find spending even a fraction of that helping fellow citizens some kind of outrageous idea.
Stop funding an imperial agenda that benefits the few and instead use that money to improve our society and the lives of people in it. That’s how you pay for it.
Slippery slope not withstanding, your perspective is very utility based but not empathetic. Is a humans value what they produce for the economy or who they are and the life they lead?
If unemployment covers cost of living better than a low wage, no benefit, long or odd hours job where in summer you need childcare and your own transportation then that job can be expensive or even more costly than having no income/unemployment at all.
A lot of commenters on here seem to miss that a good chunk of the nation makes under $10 an hour (<$20k/year) without benefits vs median CS/IT work at $60k+ depending on the state plus benefits. You can't label a segment of the economy "essential" then attack low wage workers for not wanting to contribute to the same economy that screws then six ways from Sunday.
I'm honestly surprised by these comments. You can't demand that everyone works without also demanding that there is demand for all work.
You know, there is a free lunch in the sense that there is no point in increasing productivity when you have already saturated demand and therefore increasing demand (even through artificial means) allows increases in productivity to become viable again. We've seen it with slavery and societies with a huge lower class. The middle class and above don't value labor because it is so plentiful and therefore don't use it efficiently and end up wasting it on useless things. Zombie companies are the extreme case of this. You have so many "useless" people working on bullshit jobs that you can have entire "useless" companies!
"It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing." - some dude
I suspect that actual number is probably even higher. If I were on extended unemployment benefits I would be very hesitant to answer this poll truthfully for fear of getting cut off. Could it be an audit masquerading as an independent pollster? Better safe than sorry.
Exactly. There's no reason to suspect this number is being over-reported, but it's very reasonable to expect hesitancy (both to polling in general and this type of polling specifically).
Also, people lie to themselves. Few people would probably want to see themselves as turning down a job simply because they already get enough from unemployment benefits.
I'm surprised to see that rejecting non-remote job offers is the reason for 11% of the respondents rather than a smaller portion. I guess that's another positive indicator that the shift to long term remote work is going strong.
I would hope that the "I was not given enough money to return to work" option would cover that. I haven't done much in the domain of large scale surveying, so I can't say how much you'd expect people to skew their own answers.
Good for them. It's called unemployment insurance for a reason. I could pay my whole life for the insurance and never cash in. If given the opportunity, I would extract every cent out of it I can. I would rather slowly look for a job than jump at the first mediocre/underpaying opportunity.
The premium is paid by employers for each W2 employee. It's a cost of hiring W2 workers that you could argue ultimately falls on those workers as well, as a 1099 worker could negotiate a higher income in exchange for the employer not having to pay for those sorts of benefits.
To call it "insurance", you need to at least imagine how the accounting and risk management might work if it were like a car/homeowners/term-life insurance policy.
First of all, do the payments alone support the program, or does it need cash infusions from taxes or money supply increases? How much would the premiums be if it was self-supporting?
Second, are those making higher premium payments (when you also account for the money infusions) at proportionally higher risk of payouts? What factors should be considered in the premium payment?
You're thinking like a business not a government/essential service. Unemployment, like a lot of services, could be designed or mandated to break even or turn a profit but whether or not that would work or result in the system failing is another question.
The capacity for a government to run essential services at a loss is a long standing component from even the US founding fathers. Hamilton wanted to adopt all debt from the colonies as a way to consolidate credit, unite the colonies financially, and put stock into the federal government with power to manage the nations debt vs individual states. Jefferson was against the policy but it (and other Hamilton drafted plans like a central bank) were approved through compromise.
The parent compared it to insurance, not me. To call it insurance invites comaprison to traditional insurance.
Sure, it can run at a loss. Maybe that's a public service. But I asked some questions that merit an answer if you want to call it insurance rather than, say, social security or something.
Note that the question was basically "which of the following influenced your decision to turn down a job offer", not "what was the primary reason you turned down a job offer."
Respondents could select more than one reason; it could be that many of these people had a more important reason for turning down the job like "child care obligations" or "the job didn't offer enough hours of work", but also selected "I receive enough money from unemployment" because that was one of the secondary factors they considered.
They also only polled 463 people and are extrapolating the 1.8 million number based on the fact that 13% (~60 people) included "unemployment insurance" as one of the factors that influenced their decision.
Ya, i have started looking at detailed polling results and often find things like a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll where 6% of those surveyed said they had never heard of Donald Trump.
I guess that plays a HUGE role. Like, if you will be working only part-time, with a low wage, no benefits, earning the same (or less) than the unemployment benefit doesn't seem enticing.
> They also only polled 463 people and are extrapolating the 1.8 million number based on the fact that 13% (~60 people) included "unemployment insurance" as one of the factors that influenced their decision.
463 people drawn from population of 14 million, assuming unbiased sampling, with a 13%/87% split on their answers to a yes/no question would have a confidence interval of about 3 at 95% confidence, so it is reasonable to conclude that the correct percentage is probably in the 10-16% range, or 1.4 million to 2.2 million.
At 99% confidence, the confidence interval would be about 4, giving 1.26 to 2.38 million.
It's worth noting that childcare is an especially huge issue right now... because there aren't enough workers. And raising wages is a Catch-22 because it directly affects childcare costs.
Which is why countries like Canada are looking at $10/day subsidized childcare. It frees up lower income people to work more and is paid for using the taxes on middle/upper income. Which effectively makes it a wealth transfer "for a good cause" so people will vote for it.
Which effectively makes it a wealth transfer "for a good cause" so people will vote for it.
That made me chuckle. If it were the US, I think it would have to read, 'Which effectively makes it a wealth transfer "for a good cause" so people will vote against it.'
Or at least, a large number would, and the checks and balances put a heavy thumb on the side of "no". So in fact a majority of people would likely vote for it, but it still would not happen.
Sadly I can see the attack ads now. Paying for other people's child care? That's socialism! Except you're going to be paying for it either way. Now do you want to pay through taxes which are least proportional to your income, or do you want to pay via increased cost in everyday goods and services, which probably affects you more than someone wealthier?
We're in the run up to an election now so lots of extravagant promises being made, we'll see what actually happens when the dust settles.
"Getting people to move from relying on unemployment insurance to wage income doesn't just automatically happen,"
The luxury of not working and able to decline jobs must be really great. In my twenty five years of work, I don’t think I’ve be ever been so privileged. To other people have this flexibility? Between kids and health insurance I’ve fought like hell to minimize time between jobs.
I've paid all my life into the tax system and never taken unemployment or other benefits except during the long vacation when at university more than forty years ago.
I am pleased that this money supports others who are less lucky than I was.
No because then I would be living in a society where I would be surrounded by poor and unhealthy people.
I enjoy living in a society where most people are adequately paid without having to work excessive hours, where medical care is easy, simple, and cheap to access, where losing one's job does not turn one into a second class citizen.
Excessive hours, more than 50 hours a week for more than a few weeks, are in fact illegal.
I enjoy it when the person selling me smiles simply because they are happy instead of because it is a requirement of the job.
In case you are wondering the society in question is Norway. No it's not paradise, just a bit closer than some places and that is to a significant extent because of a greater degree of solidarity.
I want to preface saying I do not believe in taxes, nor the child tax credit. And that I think both the child tax credit and unemployment (other than voluntarily unemployment insurance) are essentially armed robbery.
But it is asinine to compare a $300/mo tax credit towards an investment that will pay rich dividends (kids grow up and pay taxes to fund your public benefits in old age and contribute to scientific and medicinal advancement that benefit you after you're old enough to be a net burden on society) vs $1200+ a month in unemployment for an adult who is now disincentivized to do anything productive and could always just go live in the wilderness if they couldn't earn currency.
It's not asinine because it's not a 1 to 1 comparison. No one is saying these two things were equal... obviously. This is just one example of a tax benefit that the OP clearly has benefited from which reaches his definition of a "free lunch"
His interpretation was outrageous so my response was a bit flippant.
There are plenty of legitimate arguments for or against these benefits, but calling it a free lunch and saying you work hard and have kids so this needs to stop is just stupid, how does having kids and you not having the flexibility you wanted matter? That is exactly what he said...
Yes. As a single man in my 20's, when I would get laid off from restaurant jobs (I worked in an area with a large share of summer tourism and september layoffs were common) I would spend the full time on unemployment because the wage difference was pretty minimal.
Even now in my mid-30s, when I was laid off for covid I waited until the expanded benefits were almost exhausted for the exact same reason (I actually made about 20 dollars more per paycheck on unemployment during the pandemic than I did at the Digital PM job I was let go from).
The term "fun-employment" is frequently used for people who have negligible difference in quality of life between employment/unemployment.
Yes, people do. And many more should. Your treadmill existence is the polar opposite of rational actors with bargaining power as invoked by economists.
Uhh wait are you actually complaining about having kids and a job? Wasn't that all your choice?! Didn't a $300 tax break per child just get sent out directly to you? Isn't that paid for by everyone even people without kids? Aren't you getting a free lunch? I demand you send me your $$ or stop your whining
It isn't a free lunch, because the $300 is going towards the start-up cost of the future tax-base.
The cost to raise a child is estimated to be about $250,000, and the average amount a person will pay in taxes is $340,000.
By my calculation that is a $90,000 "free lunch" to society with the investment to make that largely born by the parent. The people actually getting the "free lunch" are those who don't have children, but benefit from the investment made by parents.
The free lunch means that it's coming from people who do not directly benefit from the result. It benefits the families with children and hypothetically should go straight to just children. The fact that you think it will result in more taxes for the community in the future does not change the fact that it comes from people without children and is still a "free lunch".
Nevermind that people w/o children would only partially POSSIBLY benefit from this in the future, while parents get the direct aid now and possible future benefits... you're wrong twice.
The free lunch means that it's coming from people who do not directly benefit from the result. It benefits the families with children and hypothetically should go straight to just children. The fact that you think it will result in more taxes for the community in the future does not change the fact that it comes from people without children and is still a "free lunch".
Nevermind that people w/o children would only partially POSSIBLY benefit from this in the future, while parents get the direct aid now and possible future benefits... you're wrong twice.
What percentage of the total currently unemployed population is the 1.8m in this headline? I know there are various ways to measure unemployment in the US. I wonder which unemployment classification group they come from.
* U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
* U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
* U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
* U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers
* U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
* U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
To try to establish causality, you'd have to compare to earlier weeks in which benefits were not as generous. Maybe on any given week there will always be a certain percentage of surveyed individuals who choose to not work because of unemployment benefits.
What the underpayment of the lower end of the workforce signals to me is that we have a massive amount of unrealized inflation coming in. Clearly we have to adjust wages up and that’s the consequence, adding to the fact that the way official inflation/CPI numbers are calculated seems to keep them artificially low.
I was just talking to someone about their father in the 70s having two cars, a 3 BR middle class house, and annual vacations as a postman. The bottom has dropped out of the buying power of American wages in the last 50 years.
Right? My parents raised a family in a house they owned, with two cars, good public schools, and sent us both to college which it turned out was practically free by current standards, on the pay of a coastguardsman. People used to be able to afford life. Desperation is not normal.
>adding to the fact that the way official inflation/CPI numbers are calculated seems to keep them artificially low.
No they are not. How do people even come up with this idea? The official CPI is 5% which is exactly where it should be. Even if you change how they are calculated it doesn't change anything except make it harder to do proper monetary policy. Keeping inflation down doesn't even make any logical sense because interest rates depend on how close you are to full employment rather than the current level of inflation. Inflation tends to be a useful indicator for full employment in normal times but we know the exact opposite is happening right now.
If anything central banks want higher inflation because the zero lower bound restricts the influence of monetary policy and persistently low inflation and deflation requires unconventional monetary policy which has a huge track record of failure. Getting off the bad monetary policy requires that evil inflation that so many people fear. It's kind of funny. All that "hyperinflation" in stocks, housing and Bitcoin is actually the result of low inflation.
You obviously have an opinion on it which of course you're entitled to, but unless I'm misreading, the tone of your message is that the CPI is obviously calculated correctly and there's no controversy surrounding it.
From what I have seen there definitely is, here is just one example from Forbes, but if you're interested in digging there are a lot of qualified opinions on this out there.
I am oddly confused. People are making rational and sound financial decision that benefits them personally and that is deemed a problem? I can't say it is weird, because I can see the constant drum of like 'news messages' on various news channels. I put it in the same corner as anti-WFH stories. Propaganda.
I technically assume I know why you are asking this question, but I will respond in good faith.
No.
Money is power and too much power gathered in too few hands is a recipe for a disaster. You may consider me as something of a radical since if I had any real power to implement policy, there would be an upper bound to what you can own ( say 3 Hawaian islands ).
I do not consider some poor sap trying to decide whether it is a better thing for him to get $cheap_food as a result of unemployment or minimum wage job an issue of the same magnitude. In fact, their only nexus is that they happen to involve money.
This is the logical conclusion to your statement: that someone making a personally beneficial decision can and should not be considered detrimental to society.
Since you obviously _dont_ think that's the case, then it becomes a question of whether this is detrimental to society, not whether it's prima facie justified just because it's in each individual's personal interests.
My statement >>People are making rational and sound financial decision that benefits them personally and that is deemed a problem?
Your statement >> This is the logical conclusion to your statement: that someone making a personally beneficial decision can and should not be considered detrimental to society.
Based on the above it would appear that you assumed a conclusion that happens to include benefit to society. That I did not state. What I did say, however, is that I find it mildly amusing that in a country where individualistic approach to life if not, dare I say it, selfish as a celebrated norm, the moment the situation happens to benefit the little guy, out of the woodwork come people bemoaning that someone is not making nearly as much as they did before. Forgive me while I do not shed to many tears in the process.
But even if I assume your assertion that it logically follows that "that someone making a personally beneficial decision can and should not be considered detrimental to society."( and clearly do not think it does ). The two situations are diametrically different in scope, its societal impact and the way we would attempt to correct it.
This is how the game of capitalism is played. Workers sell their labor to employers based on who is bidding the highest. If the government is paying better than employers, people will and should go with that. If employers need more labor, they need to pay better. Simple as that.
Business owners (who are usually ardent capitalists) will whine about how that's not fair and sprinkle in some nonsense about how good hard work is. To them I say, "If this is the game you wanna play, then play it."
How can an employer compete to buy time when the government is willing to push the price to infinity?
In other words, even if he offered more than unemployment benefits, it's worth it to take the lesser amount and work 0 hours per week than take the higher income but have to put in 40 hours.
In some states, the government has been paying people over $4000 per month to work for zero hours. That is paying people an infinite amount for time, because there is zero time being offered in exchange.
If I was making that amount and not working, and you said here's $5000 a month for a full time job, I wouldn't take your offer because giving up 40 hours of my life per week is not worth the extra $1000.
How exactly can this be handwaved? It's extremely difficult to compete with that. One market participatant is pushing the price of time to infinity.
A check on that is people who can claim unemployment benefits while obtaining under the table jobs. How many from the official unemployment figures are doing so? The inflation-induced construction boom would seem quite amenable to such work.
This isn't capitalism. Having unemployment and employment "compete" is oxymoronic.
If one competitor (the gov) has unlimited capital and requires near-zero expenditure from the recipient, and there's no way for other "competitors" to obtain unlimited capital then it's a rigged game. Hell, it's not even a game because you're comparing apples to oranges.
How do I sell my labor to the government? As someone who has a job that pays well, I'd gladly exchange not working for the current unemployment benefits. I don't seem to have the option to do this on my own volition though.
1- It's short term and even the level of payment is inconsistent.
2- People being put into this situation come from a multitude of existing economic situations, with no proper controls. Also, nobody is actually able to "opt in" (since you couldn't quit your job and collect UI in many places)
We still have no idea what a widespread, long-term UBI program would look like or its effect, even after studying this. (though of course people on both sides of the debate will take the situation as proof that they were right).
It's not a UBI because you have to be unemployed. It does confirm that some people stop working if they receive "welfare" which is not very surprising.
Pay is too low, bosses too demanding, too many barriers to work (such as screening, interviews, drug tests, pre-employment tests, background checks, etc.). Companies may say they need more workers but they are pretty choosy when it comes to hiring.
I visited a few cities earlier this year, Flagstaff AZ, St. George UT, and a few others and I was shocked how many "help wanted" signs were out on almost every single business. I talked to a few employees about the help wanted signs at a restaurant or two and they said nobody is applying to these jobs. I would say its a few things, some people are concerned due to covid and getting infected. Alot of people are overworked and due to unemployment being high are taking a much needed break from work. I think those are both valid reasons, Childcare is also a big one as many a spouse quit their job to take care of children due to shuttered schools and daycare, I personally know a few.
If none of those locations pay above minimum wage many may not only be taking a pay cut vs unemployment but also need to find transport, childcare, and give up putting that time into their homes/families. It's summer and without vaccinations for those under 16 childcare is rough or hugely expensive.
It's not the same, but around here people list a 5x/week dog walk at $60/hour (what?!). I'm not sure what they are earning to validate that expense but even at half that hourly cost I would save more money quitting my job than sending even one kid to childcare during work hours.
That's such a weird way to frame things. You have some amount of finite time where you receive unemployment benefits in order to find a new job. Logically, you will try to find the best new job you can while you are given this buffer to do so, so obviously you'll turn down crappy jobs that don't pay well, because you have this benefit that gives you the leeway to do so in order to find yourself the better job.
Also, you've worked for this benefit, it isn't given to you "for free", your prior work contributed to the unemployment benefit which you are now using, and your future work will also go back to paying for it.
I think it would have been a good idea to have a "cash out" option for benefits. Of course people aren't going to turn down free money. But if you could get a lump sum of 75% of the benefits you are entitled to when you accept a job, people would be more likely to go back to work.
This article and its chart is sending mixed messages. I wonder if the writer and graph guy are the same person.
The poll lists a dozen reasons that 9%-14% ticked as reasons turning for down job offer. Third is benefits. Conspicuously missing is "salary too low " or "expect/hope for a better offer soon." Surely, those are also normal reasons for turning down job offers.
IDK what the true "story" is here, but regardless... this does not necessarily sound bad to me. "Hard to find employees" is much better than "hard to find jobs." They are basically opposites. If there are no jobs, employees are plentiful. If jobs are plentiful, employees are not.
Why shouldn't we want a bull market for labour? What's the next concern, "salary increases?"
As the article notes, about half the states have ended the expanded benefits, which means we're currently carrying out an experiment on the effect. A poll seems kind of meaningless compared to just looking at the real effect.
This is a good thing employers have too much power when negotiating salaries for low end jobs. Results in people working full time but still needing food stamps/government support to survive. If you cant run a business while paying a decent wage your business is not viable.
The other piece is the cost of child care, if child care is too expensive it would cost more for a spouse to take a job than be the stay at home child caretaker.
This was our situation when our kids were little. My wife would have been able to clear something like $20/wk (or was it per month ... I forget) working full time after costs. Just wasn't worth it.
That means that 1.8M Americans are potentially available to work at any business that can offer more pay and dignity than unemployment. If this labor shortage exists, businesses know what number they need to beat. Is that difficult?
It means that 1.8M Americans who can work and choose not to work are having their pay and dignity provided by the Americans who can work and choose to work.
As one of the Americans who can work and chooses to work, I can inform you that our patience is limited.
Spend lots of calories, possibly risk your health and be stressed to earn 10N or have none of those things and earn 7N and spend the extra time trying to better yourself and escape the neo-serf existence.
Seems obvious to me.
For all the people saying this is a bad thing I invite you to quit your high paying tech job, give away all your savings and possessions, move to a fly-over state and get a blue collar job or two.
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