Unemployment: a Disadvantage or Benefit?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, countless Americans across the country have lost their jobs and security of their livelihoods. Fortunately, unemployment benefits have and are continuing to serve as a lifeline for those who remain jobless. Unfortunately, however, millions of jobless Americans are wondering whether Congress will extend the COVID-19 relief program now that the program has expired as of July 31, 2020. In question is Congress’s decision to either extend the $600 weekly relief program or reduce payments regarding the amount Americans receive.

While Democrats favor the continuation of the $600 relief program into 2021, Senate Republicans favor deducing the amount Americans receive from the stimulus relief program and are even considering the idea of including bonuses for those who accept job offers, due to concerns that unemployment benefits are an incentive for the unemployed not to return to work. An investor in a sandwich shop in Buford, Georgia expressed,

If the government is paying more to stay home, why would those people be out there risking their lives, number one, number two, staying away from their families and number three, making less money?

Zalak Thakkar

As Thakkar mentions, the unemployed have been making more money at home (where they are, for the most part, shielded from the risk of contracting Corona virus) rather than out in the workforce, where many Americans cite the absence of hazard pay and altogether, less pay, as a reason to not return to work. A survey conducted by the  National Federation of Independent Business Research Center in May revealed that “Nearly one in five [small business owners] have had an employee decline a job offer because he or she wanted to remain on unemployment.”

Consequently, more Americans across the nation are relying on unemployment benefits, which are, in turn, showing as a factor in a weakened economy. Although unemployment is presenting itself as more of an advantage than a disadvantage, the risk of the relief program being misused is a thought running through Senate members’ minds. “Jobless Americans can’t turn down positions and continue to collect unemployment benefits — unless they meet the criteria to qualify for a temporary pandemic program that Congress created to help those directly affected by the Corona virus.”