Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
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Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#2The fact that you could easily earn more on unemployment than not was a bizarre feature of the US COVID response. Most, if not all state unemployment schemes cover part of your wages if unemployed, not more than you made before.
It creates a strong incentive to be considered partially or fully laid off.
I'm pro basic income, but definitely don't support paying more to be unproductive than productive.
This benefit ends this month (July), so that is good.
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#3If there was an actual shortage of workers, wages would be rising for the essential workers.
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#4The fact that you could easily earn more on unemployment than not was a bizarre feature of the US COVID response. Most, if not all state unemployment schemes cover part of your wages if unemployed, not more than you made before. It creates a strong incentive to be considered partially or fully laid off. I'm pro basic income, but definitely don't support paying more to be unproductive than productive. This benefit end…
I always thought the point was to keep people home during the pandemic instead of working odd jobs to compensate. Incentivizing people to not work by paying them more to stay at home was a public health policy choice. Of course, the bills were passed really rapidly and maybe weren’t that thought out.
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#5> When she got her unemployment benefits, she realized something unheard of: She was making more money not working.
The temporary COVID unemployment bill was so rushed that they didn’t index the unemployment to the person’s earnings. If you lost your job or had your hours reduced, you get an extra $600/week on top of state unemployment. About half of people receiving this are receiving more from the combined unemployment measures than they did from their jobs.
This is was a necessary compromise to get the relief enacted as quickly as possible. We didn’t have an easy way to implement a more complex unemployment system at a national level, so we compromised with a flat rate for everyone. Unfortunately, many people are misinterpreting this and assuming that unemployment is always this lucrative (it’s not, and the $600/week ends after July) or assuming that our government has enough money lying around to pay everyone this much all of the time (we don’t, this is actually very expensive for the taxpayers).
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#6The incentives are so terrible that it might have been done on purpose to encourage people to stay home.
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#7The incentives are so terrible that it might have been done on purpose to encourage people to stay home.
I think you are giving politicians way too much credit.
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#8If there was an actual shortage of workers, wages would be rising for the essential workers.
I may not be an economist, but I think this does not make sense.
If there is a worker shortage, do all of the workers go to work and say "give me more money"? I would also contend there would be no reason for say, walmart to suddenly offer more money just because everyone has been ordered to stay home. If there is an _actual_ shortage, increasing pay does not just fabricate workers.
I have relatives who are essential (specialized nurses, and hospice nurses). Their pay has not changed, in fact, their actual wages have fallen through the floor as they are working 12-16 hour days instead of 10-12 hour days (when they are supposed to work 8 hours a day), so their hourly wage (they do not get paid for all that time they are charting, after hours, at home) has dropped significantly.
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#9I think it mainly highlighted an unfortunate part of our economy.
The $600/wk thing looks like making sure everyone gets a living wage on unemployment until they thought we'd be able to reopen the economy fully and they'd be able to get a job as normal.
But, it just highlighted how many people are working and not earning a living wage in the first place.
Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
#10> When she got her unemployment benefits, she realized something unheard of: She was making more money not working. The temporary COVID unemployment bill was so rushed that they didn’t index the unemployment to the person’s earnings. If you lost your job or had your hours reduced, you get an extra $600/week on top of state unemployment. About half of people receiving this are receiving more from the combined unemploy…
Our Quantitative easing and corporate bailouts are in the trillions, why would we not pay out significantly less for people who are struggling to find jobs? Why does the till start counting when its normal people affected?