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Full-Text Articles in Labor Economics
Unemployment Insurance: Fix It And Fund It, Christopher J. O'Leary, David E. Balducchi, Ralph E. Smith
Unemployment Insurance: Fix It And Fund It, Christopher J. O'Leary, David E. Balducchi, Ralph E. Smith
Upjohn Institute Policy Papers
During the 2020–2021 pandemic, the federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system in the United States nearly reached the breaking point. The surge in joblessness was matched in history only by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Congress hurriedly crafted temporary pandemic benefit assistance programs to fill benefit and eligibility gaps in state-run UI programs, handing them off to capacity-starved state UI agencies that fitfully served millions of workers and employers. After years of policy neglect and contraction, state UI programs have low benefit recipiency, meager earnings replacement rates, and inadequate benefit financing. It is time for comprehensive federal UI reform legislation, …
How Federal Pandemic Relief Helped Replenish State Unemployment Reserves, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline
How Federal Pandemic Relief Helped Replenish State Unemployment Reserves, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline
Upjohn Institute Policy Papers
Unemployment insurance (UI) is a joint federal-state program that pays temporary partial earnings replacement to involuntarily unemployed workers while they seek reemployment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, UI claims surged and became a primary source for income replacement for workers who lost their jobs. However, despite previous federal incentives for states to shore up their UI funding reserves, the scale of claims during the pandemic was unprecedented, and the federal government needed to step in to help pay not only for direct, expanded benefits but for additional assistance to states themselves. Although this effort helped backstop the successful operation of states’ …
Equity In Unemployment Insurance Benefit Access, Christopher J. O'Leary, William E. Spriggs, Stephen A. Wandner
Equity In Unemployment Insurance Benefit Access, Christopher J. O'Leary, William E. Spriggs, Stephen A. Wandner
Upjohn Institute Policy Papers
This paper examines the uneven pattern of access to unemployment insurance (UI) by age, gender, and race across the United States. We present results from a descriptive analysis using publicly available longitudinal data reported by states on rates of UI recipiency and characteristics of UI beneficiaries. Recipiency measures the proportion of all unemployed who are receiving UI benefits. UI is intended to provide temporary, partial income replacement to involuntarily unemployed UI applicants with strong labor force attachments while they are able, available, and actively seeking return to work. Each of these UI eligibility conditions contributes to the UI recipiency rate …
Options For Unemployment Insurance Structural And Administrative Reform: Proposals And Analysis, Stephen A. Wandner
Options For Unemployment Insurance Structural And Administrative Reform: Proposals And Analysis, Stephen A. Wandner
Upjohn Institute Policy Papers
The unemployment insurance (UI) program is broken. UI benefits and taxes are out of balance, with benefit payments tending to exceed tax revenues, while the program is unable to provide adequate reemployment services to permanently separated UI recipients. The current crisis in the UI program has been building over the past four decades. Although UI and Social Security were both enacted as part of the Social Security Act, reforms to the programs have diverged sharply. Congress has frequently amended the Social Security program to increase benefits and taxes, and then in 1972 it enacted a permanent annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) …
Options For Addressing Long-Term Unemployment As The Economy Recovers, Ralph E. Smith
Options For Addressing Long-Term Unemployment As The Economy Recovers, Ralph E. Smith
Upjohn Institute Policy Papers
The recent recession and its aftermath have once again demonstrated the importance of the unemployment insurance system as a vital part of the nation’s safety net. But some facets of the program are in need of repair, including the high rate at which recipients run out of regular benefits, even in a strong labor market. Since the mid-1970s, the exhaustion rate has increased by three to four percentage points per decade, after adjusting for cyclical variation and temporary benefit extensions. This brief, drawing on an extensive review of research on the secular rise in UI exhaustions and programs designed to …
Unemployment Insurance And Low-Educated Single Working Mothers Before And After Welfare Reform, H. Luke Shaefer, Liyun Wu, Elizabeth Phillips
Unemployment Insurance And Low-Educated Single Working Mothers Before And After Welfare Reform, H. Luke Shaefer, Liyun Wu, Elizabeth Phillips
Upjohn Institute Policy Papers
No abstract provided.