No One Should Get 99 Weeks of Unemployment Benefits

At some point, extended unemployment benefits are no longer unemployment, but welfare. Let’s call it what it is. The problem with extended unemployment insurance payouts is that they encourage incorrect behavior on the part of job seekers. I can give a number of examples. An accountant who, because she can make a chunk of change during tax season, does not upskill to in-demand technologies to secure full-time, year-round employment. A laid-off, college-educated, white collar professional with over 20 years’ experience in a particular area who, again, clings to old technology and the old way of doing things. This is what he does and he expects employers to buy it, never mind that technology has dictated new ways of operating that obviate the need for his methods. Neither he nor the accountant will get their desired outcomes with their out-of-date skills. Yet they persist and fall back on extended unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits should not fund this behavior.

All that being said, there is a structural aspect to today’s unemployment that is caused by the shifting business landscape. The people least able to cope with this shift are those who lack the ability to readily gain a salable skill, say a long-time manual labor worker at a manufacturing plant who does not have any other type of skill or education. These are often older workers who are unfamiliar with technology and who lack the wherewithal to even know where to start. Targeted retraining through community colleges could help here (let us forget the for-profit school nonsense which churns out people with no salable skills after their having spent tens of thousands of dollars). It is long overdue that the length of unemployment payments be cut. If people need to go on welfare, they go on welfare. I suspect many will get religion if it comes to that.

The unemployed can now get up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits (26 weeks of state benefits and up to 73 weeks of federal benefits). The House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill that would pare back the 73 weeks to 33. They should do this.


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