HEY, IT BEATS WORKING
1.8M nix jobs for aid: poll
More than 1.8 million unemployed Americans have turned down jobs during the pandemic because of the generosity of unemployment insurance benefits, according to a poll published Wednesday by Morning Consult.
Of those collecting unemployment benefits, 29 percent said they had turned down job offers. And among that group, 45 percent cited the generosity of the benefits “as a major reason why they did not accept the job offer.”
The findings are based on Morning Consult’s survey of a representative sample of 5,000 US adults from June 22 to June 25.
Based on the 14.1 million Americans who were collecting unemployment benefits as of the week ending June 19, the most recent figure available, Morning Consult estimated that 1.84 million Americans had passed on a job due to unemployment benefits during the pandemic.
“These UI recipients possess the necessary skills and experience to be offered a job in the current economy and had some level of contact with prior employers or actively applied to positions at some point during the pandemic,”
John Leer, Morning Consult’s chief economist, said in a note.
“While health-care concerns and child-care obligations are a barrier to many unemployed workers accepting jobs, these workers acknowledge that they would be employed in the absence of unemployment benefits,” he added.
The figure applies to out-ofwork Americans who were receiving any unemployment benefits, including traditional state unemployment as well as the federal emergency benefits that doled out an extra $300 per week and are set to end in September.
Those federal unemployment benefits became a sticking point for business owners, Republicans and many economists said this spring as job growth failed to meet expectations amid the economic reopening, leading to a labor shortage.
Leer, Morning Consult’s economist, noted that the slower-thanexpected job rebound is not “exclusively attributable to the generosity of unemployment benefits” — but the sluggishness is due to a “range of factors.”