Americans who have been laid off from their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic have been able to collect an additional $600 a week in unemployment benefits on top of what they get from their state.
The supplemental $600 Americans receive has been controversial, especially given that two-thirds of laid-off workers receive more money from their unemployment benefits than they did from their jobs.
As lawmakers consider a new round of stimulus funding, there are three proposals on the table on how to replace the extra $600, two of which would allow unemployed Americans to receive additional funds on top of state unemployment benefits.
Last month, the Democratic-run House passed the $3 trillion HEROS Act, which would, among other things, extend the extra $600 federal unemployment benefit to January 2021.
The Congressional Budget Office found that if these benefits were extended through January 2021, an estimated five of every six recipients would receive more in benefits than they would from working those six months.
“If the benefit of $600 per week was extended, fewer than one in thirty recipients would receive benefits — generally the maximum amount in their state — that were less than 50% of their potential earnings,” the CBO report states.
Some have argued those generous benefits will keep people from seeking new jobs. But extending the $600 unemployment benefit would mean that Americans would have more money to spend in stores, and that could ultimately lead to lower unemployment, Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank based in Washington, D.C., said.
“It’s not true that there’s a pool of jobs out there that people would fill if they weren’t receiving unemployment benefits,” she said.
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