US Chamber of Commerce calls for ending extra unemployment benefits after disappointing jobs report
Source: Yahoo Money
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling on Congress to cancel the extra $300 in weekly unemployment benefits, citing worker shortages.
"The disappointing jobs report makes it clear that paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market," U.S. Chamber of Commerce Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley said in a statement on Friday. "One step policymakers should take now is ending the $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefit. Based on the Chamber’s analysis, the $300 benefit results in approximately one in four recipients taking home more in unemployment than they earned working."
The U.S. economy added much fewer jobs than expected in April, with employers increasing their payrolls by 266,000 jobs, well below the 1 million that economists expected, according to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg. The economy is still 8.2 million jobs short of its February 2020 pre-pandemic levels.
The Chamber's support for canceling benefits comes after South Carolina and Montana announced plans this week to eliminate their federal jobless benefits starting next month.
Read more: https://money.yahoo.com/us-chamber-calls-for-ending-the-extra-300-in-unemployment-benefits-after-disappointing-jobs-report-151828040.html
I've been on unemployment before. It really doesn't pay shit. It doesn't say much for the wage being offered if one is making more on unemployment.
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LizBeth
(11,222 posts)when I was being paid 11.25 an hour. Not much but it covers living expense and my job 50 hours a week did not cover my living expense and I was using my meager savings to fill the gap.
Lovie777
(23,002 posts)
Guilded Lilly
(5,591 posts)are severely underpaid even without the added trauma of a life-sanity-threatening pandemic when you can keep them struggling and desperate as poorly paid workers?
Here’s an apparently outrageous, unthinkable suggestion: PAY A LIVING WAGE.
doc03
(39,087 posts)Response to doc03 (Reply #4)
hamsterjill This message was self-deleted by its author.
msongs
(73,758 posts)not increasing pay to get the workers to show up. typical garbage scams by the chambers of commerce republican fascists inc
Response to msongs (Reply #16)
hamsterjill This message was self-deleted by its author.
SamsDrink
(50 posts)These are Union jobs, that pay well and have good benefits. Let’s stick to the facts
msongs
(73,758 posts)
Deminpenn
(17,516 posts)in my area. I think every retail business I frequent has signs up saying they are hiring, most at rates $12/hr and up. Many businesses are having open interviews, just come in, ask for an interview and likely get an offer right away.
Businesses are going to have to realize they'll have to pay better in order to attract and keep employees. The Chamber of Commerce wants benefits discontinued exactly because its member don't want to pay higher wages.
A solution would be to allow workers on unemployment to keep their benefits until they are set to expire when they get a job. The way it works now is that if you're on unemployment and get a job, your benefits stop.
Response to Deminpenn (Reply #34)
hamsterjill This message was self-deleted by its author.
Deminpenn
(17,516 posts)Last edited Sat May 8, 2021, 09:43 AM - Edit history (1)
and the competition for workers is driving up starting wages.
As I said, I'd like to see unemployed people be allowed to keep their UI benefits until they expire if they decide to return to work.
MichMan
(17,159 posts)Two people working side by side doing the same job for $12 per hour. One has been working there for many months and the other "just got hired after being laid off somewhere else.
The first earns $12 per hour and the other gets the same $12 plus an additional $15 per hour unemployment for a total of $27.
The first person would either be very angry, or demand to be laid off for just a couple weeks and then brought back to get the same deal. Nearly every employer would agree to go along with it.
Deminpenn
(17,516 posts)I personally know people who've been on unemployment for the duration of the epidemic. The specter of losing some or all of their UI benefits is keeping them from working. It's not like the UI benefits will last forever either, they expire in Sept.
MichMan
(17,159 posts)That is considered to be a myth by most everyone here.
Deminpenn
(17,516 posts)about what course of actions benefits them the most. Wouldn't you?
Maybe some don't want to return to low wage jobs or they want to do something else.
Personally, I don't think anyone should necessarily lose benefits because they work. It's not just UI, but an array of things like SNAP that are cut or disappear if you go to work in these low wage jobs.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Interviewed one guy who couldnt get workers even paying $20 an hr.
I'm in GA; every main road I drive down has "now hiring" signs"
doc03
(39,087 posts)Last edited Sat May 8, 2021, 07:35 AM - Edit history (1)
food service that normally pay minimum wage. The minimum wage in Ohio is $8.80 and employers are
offering more than minimum wage as high as $12 that I know of. If you get $300 and whatever the unemployment is
you will get more than working for even $12 considering most of those jobs are not full time. I can see why people don't
want to work and make less. But if those jobs were filled it would definitely drop the unemployment significantly. The cost of living
in this area is far lower than many areas where $15 is the minimum wage. Even $10 here would give a person a better
standard of living than in California or NYC. The fact is even before COVID they were having trouble finding workers, then
when the unemployment rate was 3.5% they were calling it a labor shortage and were worried about wages going up and inflation.
lonely bird
(2,945 posts)And before taxes is important. FICA comes out. State and federal taxes come out. You would get it back but it comes out and impacts your daily living.
What is freaking out the Chamber of Feudalism is that enough people have had it with low wages. How about companies drop their prices to make goods and services cheaper? That won’t happen. Inflation is a greed/fear psychological response. There is no price fairy that makes prices go up.
doc03
(39,087 posts)somehow some people were surviving on around $17000 gross income 14 months ago. Not saying they were rich but they were getting by somehow. I suppose many are still living with their parents or have more than one income. That is about what I get on SS I could live on that alone but couldn't live my current life style without my IRA and employer pension. The company didn't just give us a pension I spent 15 months over the years on strike to get a pension.
lonely bird
(2,945 posts)Define survival. If it is not already in the servant economy we are well on our way to it.
Trueblue1968
(19,253 posts)FIND ONE FOR ME WOULD YOU??? I am 70 years old. my typing is crap, i can't do clerical work anymore cuz i have NERVE DAMAGE in my left hand.
forthemiddle
(1,459 posts)Are you eligible for unemployment if you are collecting social security?
niyad
(132,492 posts)to which you refer pay a living, thriving wage, at companies that actually care about, and protect their employees and their health and safety? With decent benefits and health care? Do they support equality? A woman's right to choose? Is there representation by the employees in decision-making?
Jedi Guy
(3,478 posts)niyad
(132,492 posts)or should be, absolute MINIMUM requirements for the companies.
I don't need to hear, on a Democratic board, why companies should be allowed to treat the people who actually make/provide the goods and services, like chattel.
And I don't want a pony. I prefer dragons. The fire-breathing kind.
Jedi Guy
(3,478 posts)Not every job is going to offer the salary and benefits you're envisioning, particularly jobs that are considered unskilled labor. I don't foresee McDonald's offering $20/hour plus benefits for fry cooks anytime soon, for instance. I also doubt that the board of directors is going to go out of their way to take the fry cook's opinion into consideration when making decisions.
ForgoTheConsequence
(5,187 posts)It's called organizing and collective bargaining.
Jedi Guy
(3,478 posts)
PatrickforB
(15,427 posts)While it is predictable that the US Chamber would come out with this unkind and in fact merciless proposal, we have to look at the skill gap.
When I analyze gaps in my own region, for example, I find the top two jobs listed are software developer and registered nurse, and the top occupation groups in which there are too many job openings chasing too few people are healthcare professional and technical, and computer mathematical. These, of course, are jobs that require higher levels of skill and formal education.
Where we see the greatest surpluses are people who formerly worked in accommodation, food and drinking places, and brick and mortar retail. Unfortunately the skills these people have DO NOT MATCH the skills employers are demanding. So, you see a skill gap - a problem with the training pipeline, and a bunch of unfilled jobs with a group of people that are unemployed, but do not have the skills to fill those jobs.
It is not surprising Republicans and Chambers tend to thoughtlessly blame people for taking a 'paid vacation' on unemployment benefits, the reality is we have some fundamental structural shortfalls in our training pipeline. I would suggest this is politically motivated - another attack on victims of economic violence, another attempt to discredit the very safety nets that keep our economy going. Yet another attempt to gut government programs, so that the so-called 'invisible hand' of the market can solve all our problems through privatization and deregulation.
Those policies are really doozies on the ground, too. Look at what happened to Texans as a result of the privatization and deregulation of their power grid. A cold snap = a $14,000 monthly power bill. Predatory capitalism. Right out of Jack London's People of the Abyss.
Are the jobs out there? Yes.
Are the unemployed people out there? Yes.
Do the unemployed have the skills necessary to fill the open jobs? Not necessarily.
Should we blame the unemployed for not filling jobs they don't have the skills to fill? Nope.
Should we rethink our training pipeline to increase options for engaging in a number of types of upskilling? Make it affordable, debt free? Yep. But the market cannot and will not do something like that, will it? It will take government, which is the solution, not the problem.
SergeStorms
(20,599 posts)Gotta' protect the slave wage paying businesses that make their existence possible. Their phoney-balonie jobs depend on getting everyone back to work for wages that keep workers below the poverty level. It's only business natural.
Budi
(15,325 posts)..who's self serving & negligent policies drove the job 's #'s over the cliff & straight into the shithole in the 1st place.
President Biden's had just 4 months.
Give him a minute. OK Chamber? 🙄
JohnSJ
(98,883 posts)that UE is ending in September, makes their call absurd. We cannot rely on ONE UE report.
Perhaps the us chamber of commerce isn't aware that the PANDEMIC ISN'T OVER yet, and ONLY 30% of adults have been fully vaccinated, which is a reason why people are hesitant about going back to work.
Perhaps the us chamber of commerce isn't aware that a good number of businesses are not coming back, because they have gone under.
Perhaps the us chamber of commerce isn't aware that a lot of kids still haven't gone back to school, and parents need support for that.
Perhaps the chamber of commerce should pull their heads out of their collective asses, instead of throwing unsubstantiated speculation.
1. Business starting to open before schools
2. Covid
3. The economy still isn't fully open, and some of those jobs will never come back, which is why it is imperative that the Biden infrastructure jobs bill is passed
AllyCat
(18,854 posts)we need to make them starve and have no ability to pay for housing, food, and medicine.
Got it.
Storybook612
(18 posts)
NQAS
(10,749 posts)And those costs mostly go up, but that's not the point. The point is costs change, and businesses have to adjust.
Shipping costs are skyrocketing, and so the costs of the products you are shipping go up, and you either absorb that cost (with lower profits), or you increase those costs and hope for the best. Or if your hopes aren't realized and you are able to do so, you stop shipping/selling that product.
You take out business loans and, dammit, the banks want you to repay those loans. That changes your cost of doing business and you deal with it.
Costs of raw materials go up - see all the recent reports regarding lumber prices. The price of building a conventional stick frame house has gone up $16,000 I read last week. Builders can't absorb that, so they tell their customers that the price has gone up. So the customer says that sucks and figures out a way, or he says that sucks and doesn't build right now or finds other materials. That's life. Nothing new about that.
And then there's the cost of labor. Same thing. Same calculations. It sucks, but it's not news. These things happen.
Now, the humongous companies have departments full of lawyers and accountants who figure this stuff out every minute of their working days (while they earn far more than $15/hr). We've all seen articles that suggest that a Big Mac would cost an extra 21 cents or some other small figure with pay at $15/hr, and items from Walmart or Costco could go up a few cents per item, depending.
Of course, the situation may not be the same with other large businesses. I've read that grocery stores operate on very slim margins. OK, but, let's face it, most grocery stores are multi-billion dollar business, and it's more than likely that increasing the prices a few cents on every item would offset the increased cost of labor. Or they can take the high road, bump their wages to $15/hr and up, and then promote that. I'd change my grocery shopping based on this. (I changed my credit card processor to Gravity Payments when they announced a few years ago that they were raising their minimum wage to $70,000.) I'd be pretty happy to shop at a store that recognized the value of paying their employees $15/hr and up, whether it's for the high school kid in his first job, a retiree, or a career retail worker in middle age.
And smaller businesses could have more trouble making these changes. And, yes, it sucks, but if you can't pay people living wages, then maybe you shouldn't be in business.
I don't blame workers for taking unemployment, if it's available, if the alternative is a job that pays less. That only makes sense. Granted, businesses that pay shit have these workers over a barrel when the unemployment runs out, but that will change, I hope, as more businesses voluntarily commit to increasing hourly wages. But to refuse federal funding for modest unemployment payments to force people back into the low paying work force is damn near immoral.
machoneman
(4,128 posts)
NJCher
(43,179 posts)keep their benefits. They have screwed the middle and lower income workers so bad for so long that this would be a good way to help people get out of debt, pay the landlord off for back rent, etc.
cstanleytech
(28,477 posts)money from somewhere it simply wont work.
Now what would work is the infrastructure bill Biden and the Democrats want to pass as that would put millions back to work not to mention with money in their pocket it will increase the amount they spend thus creating more jobs.
That is the real reason why the Republicans oppose it as they want to use a poor recovery economy to win more seats even though they are the ones that actually caused the problem.
NJCher
(43,179 posts)besides that, that may not be what's going on. See this Washington Post article:
It’s not a ‘labor shortage.’ It’s a great reassessment of work in America
Hiring was much weaker than expected in April. Wall Street thinks it’s a blip, but there could be a much deeper re-think going on of what jobs are needed and what workers want to do on a daily basis.
President Biden’s team has vowed that its massive stimulus package will recover all the remaining jobs lost during the pandemic in about a year, but that promise won’t be kept unless there’s a big pickup in hiring soon. There are still 8.2 million jobs left to recover. At the same time, business leaders and Republicans are complaining that there is a “worker shortage" and they largely blame the more generous unemployment payments and stimulus checks for making people less likely to take low-paying fast food and retail jobs again. Democratic economists counter that companies could raise pay if they really wanted workers back quickly.
One way to make sense of this weak jobs report is to do what Wall Street did and shrug it off as an anomaly. Stocks still rose Friday as investors saw this as a blip. They think there is just a lag in hiring and more people will return to work as they get vaccinated. And they point out odd-ball months have occurred before, especially with some weird quirks in the Labor Department’s seasonal adjustments.
“With the U.S. economy rapidly reopening, and news of pockets of labor shortages emerging, the markets should treat today’s number as an anomaly in a generally positive upward trend,” wrote Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors, to clients.
But another way to look at this is there is a great re-assessment going on in the U.S. economy. It’s happening on a lot of different levels. At the most basic level, people are still hesitant to return to work until they are fully vaccinated and their children are back in school and daycare full-time. For example, all the job gains in April went to men. The number of women employed or looking for work fell by 64,000, a reminder that childcare issues are still in play.
more at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/07/jobs-report-labor-shortage-analysis/
MOMFUDSKI
(7,080 posts)the Chamber. That is all.
Tiger8
(432 posts)Their only concern are their greedy fat cat members...big corporate chains who pay minimum wage, if that.
Jedi Guy
(3,478 posts)If they're paying less than the federal minimum wage, they're in a whole heap of trouble.
Tiger8
(432 posts)Happens all the time where management finds snarky ways to cut payroll expenses. And don’t get me started on gig, temp workers, independent contractors, etc.
Also, large corporations can legally pay workers age 20 or below, $4.25/hr for up to 90 days a year. Lobbyists clearly earn their fees.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/32-minimum-wage-youth
turbinetree
(27,559 posts)money instead of corporate lackey's money ...Fuck Them.....
bullimiami
(14,075 posts)Happy Hoosier
(9,535 posts)That will attract workers
KG
(28,795 posts)
Warpy
(114,616 posts)The operative words are "shit wages."
I_UndergroundPanther
(13,370 posts)You financially abuse people,your business should go under.
Midnight Writer
(25,420 posts)Then these supremely talented people can build their fortunes all over again from the ground up, creating even more jobs and prosperity in the process.
They just need a kick in the pants to remove their complacency, and our economy will thrive.
And we won't have to screw over millions of working class folks to do this, just a few hundred over achievers.
I wonder how the Chamber of Commerce likes my plan?
packman
(16,296 posts)As long as the working class can be subjugated with low wages to support the owners and controllers of wealth, the more it appeared that we had a working system - based on the propaganda bull shit of anyone can be a millionaire -all you had to do was work hard enough. The system is a Potemkin economic shell that has shown how vaporous it really is. Without low-wage employees, it falls apart.
wiggs
(8,813 posts)from getting something they don't deserve
patphil
(9,082 posts)But the Chamber of Commerce isn't interested in paying a fair wage, only in cheap and plentiful labor.
Cheezoholic
(3,720 posts)"Based on the Chamber’s analysis, the $300 benefit results in approximately one in four recipients taking home more in unemployment than they earned working."....
So ending it 3 out of 4 that are struggling on less, sometimes much less, get kicked to the street. Yeah, makes perfect antebellum sense to me.
Sucha NastyWoman
(3,019 posts)Are waiters and waitresses, who wages are far less than minimum wage ($2.?? Per hour) plus tips which may or may not materialize. So in order to take that job, they have to have faith that the tables will be full all/most of the time so that they might actually make more than they would on unemployment. And if they guess wrong, it might take months to get back on unemployment ( as it did for some when they previously applied.)
Also what about those who were working but are now going back to school/ vocational training programs, to try to position themselves for a better future?
MichMan
(17,159 posts)Either are retired people. You have to be available and looking for work to receive benefits.
Roy Rolling
(7,635 posts)My connect them suggestion for today is extended unemployment benefits and $15 national minimum wage.
Make those employers pay a fair wage and the government will stop supplementing them with enhanced unemployment benefits.
The business owners begging for relief are the same ones who beg to eliminate the minimum wage altogether, or pay $2.35 an hour to employees who get tips.
maxrandb
(17,432 posts)after 50+ years of them supporting fucked up trickle down policies and funding racist politicians.
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)and now they have the gall to complain when some people make a sound financial decision that unemployment is better than working right now. They can go fuck themselves. When was the last time they did anything of value?
Hotler
(13,747 posts)pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and found better jobs. Suck it dry chamber.
TexasBushwhacker
(21,204 posts)Children under 16 still can't vaccinated. IF their schools/pre schools/day care have gone back to regular operations, are they doing enough to keep keep kids safe?
Hospitality workers (ie servers making $2.15 an hour plus tips) might be willing to return to work IF the restaurants are busy enough that they can make enough money, but what if business hasn't picked up yet? What if they had a maskhole for a boss who won't allow them to wear a mask because it "looks bad"?
Most states don't have anything approaching herd immunity and may not ever. Vaccines are more available in some places than others. I just got my 2nd Pfizer shot 2 weeks ago and I'm classified 1b. Are these grumbling business owners expecting former employees to return to work UNVACCINATED? Fuck them!
maliaSmith
(201 posts)The US Chamber of C continues to give money to the GOP politicians who voted to overturn our election.
I ask every business I go into if they're a member of the C of C . If they are, I mention what the national C of C is doing and tell them, since they give money to GOP via C of C, I'm taking my business to other businesses who aren't members and don't give money to GOP via C of C.
More people should do this.
TheFarseer
(9,771 posts)There’s lots of help wanted signs and a bunch of job fairs with lots of employers and no job seekers. I understand those jobs might not all be the best jobs in the world but we are hiring for supervisors for good pay at my work and no one is applying so they are not ALL bad jobs. Then again, that’s just my part of the world. I can’t comment on CA or wherever y’all live.