Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 348 posts

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#31

Post by save_ferris »

readingnews wrote: post #8
afpx wrote: post #3

If 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…

Those examples you cite seem pretty contrived to me.

A more real-world scenario would be more like a hospital facing a critical nursing shortage improving its compensation package for new hires. They probably wouldn’t bump current nurses pay unless they feared an exodus, but most companies operate this way.

Software firms do this all the time because the demand for developers is so high. A developer candidate that knows how to negotiate effectively can usually hit the top of their pay band or even exceed it. But the caveat is that it takes a job hop to get paid, which I assume is true for most other industries.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#32

Post by acomjean »

The amount you got in employment, over or under what you usually got was a matter of what state you were in. Each state has different unemployment benefits, and of course large differences in cost of living. and extra $600 doesn't go very far to help pay for housing in the expensive states.

The NYTimes did a decent analysis of each state.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/econ...

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#33

Post by milquetoastaf »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21
throwaway_USD wrote: post #12

From the time Congress passed the $6.2T Bill that gave $4T to the FED to prop up the stock market, $700B in PPP loans; and and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks, it should have put things in perspective. Ideally the stock market wouldn't have been propped up and the PPP loan program would have been more legitimate to save real small businesses (just wait until all the fraud comes out of this thin…

> and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. Everyone qualified for that stimulus (depending on income thresholds, it was phased out for higher incomes), regardless of job loss. Unemployed people receive an additional $600/week from the late-March COVID relief bill through July 31. There are additional measures to extend the duration of regular…

>It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss.

No it didn't. It only went to people making less than 70k

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#34

Post by JumpCrisscross »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #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 unemploy…

> they didn’t index the unemployment to the person’s earnings...we didn’t have an easy way to implement a more complex unemployment system at a national level

This wasn't an oversight or logistical concern [1].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/26/coronavirus...

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#35

Post by monocasa »

throwaway_USD wrote: post #19
monocasa wrote: post #9

I 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.

>But, it just highlighted how many people are working and not earning a living wage in the first place. Exactly, we allegedly had the best economy the world has ever seen, record high stock prices/markets, and lowest rate of unemployment. But the reality the economy was revealed to be weak and not even capitalism (capital based ownership) but some form of debtism (some form of financial servitude, in lieu of ownershi…

> not even capitalism (capital based ownership) but some form of debtism (some form of financial servitude, in lieu of ownership).

Eh, I'd argue it's still capitalism. Nothing about capitalism says how concentrated capital can't be.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#36

Post by gboss »

dfxm12 wrote: post #13
gboss wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Incentivizing people to stay home was a bug, not a feature. There is absolutely nothing that suggests the federal government is interested in doing this on purpose (and we might see a lot more people outside if the eviction protection measures aren't revisited by the end of the month). Quite the opposite - the message has constantly been that they want to get people out working as soon as possible in deference to "th…

The federal government is made up of many different actors with different goals. The $600 unemployment pandemic bonus was only added to the relief package because of the house democrats insistence. I think it’s hard to believe that was not their goal.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#37

Post by protonimitate »

mchusma wrote: post #2

The 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'm pro basic income, but definitely don't support paying more to be unproductive than productive.

And if COVID has proven anything, its that the most productive workers are the ones who didn't even get a chance to earn the additional $600.

The essential employees, the ones that keep the country running, are forced to continue making a less-than-livable wage.

It's a very outdated notion that there is a linear correlation between "productivity" and pay.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#38

Post by Nightshaxx »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #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 unemploy…

Republicans acctually did try to anticipate this problem with an amendment but Democrats pushed it through. [1]

I don't know how long an amendment would delay the bill, but depending on the time period an argument could be made that this was intentional. Yes, if this was going to delay the bill a few weeks, it probably was just rejected to get it out, but if it would be a few days I think it would be reasonable to consider it.

[2] https://www.vox.com/2020/3/25/21194278/lindsey-graham-corona...

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#39

Post by PragmaticPulp »

clansimus wrote: post #26
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. Everyone qualified for that stimulus (depending on income thresholds, it was phased out for higher incomes), regardless of job loss. Unemployed people receive an additional $600/week from the late-March COVID relief bill through July 31. There are additional measures to extend the duration of regular…

> That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss. No, it didn't.

Okay, to be pedantic because your comment didn’t provide full details:

The $1200 went to adults who were not dependents of someone else and who earned less than a certain threshold, with the amount prorated depending on your AGI and your tax filing type (single, married, head of household).

My point was that everyone qualified for it. It wasn’t dependent on losing your job first. You could keep your job and still receive the (up to) $1200 stimulus if your income met the thresholds.

Post reply on HN