I'm not sure not seeing it in the data immediately really tells you that much, as there are other things going on (like stimulus payments) that also contribute. But to the extent nobody was staying home because of extra unemployment benefits, it seems like a no brainer to end them. If there are jobs available, there doesn't seem like a need for benefits beyond 4-8 weeks, depending on what you think is a reasonable amount of time to pay somebody to help them be selective in what job they get.
That all seems reasonable. I'd probably let people search for closer to 8 weeks to find a comparable paying job, but at the same time, I can also see the argument that if you want that flexibility, you should save for it. Main reason I don't buy that argument is that you are forced to pay for unemployment "insurance" and it's pretty much by definition a worse deal the better employee you are, so I don't think it's unreasonable for people to have a couple of months to try and find something similar if they have been forced to pay into it. I wish employees were just forced to pay into a savings account that ultimately gets released to them and insurance was only available to people in the earliest parts of their career.
I wasnt complaining when I posted the comments about what my legislature is doing in the name of improving employment issues across the state. I was just listing what they are tryin to do.
To give an opinion, I dont think what they have done will help improve things. It will reduce how long companies pay for unemployment, so I guess I think it will effectively benefit business if anything.
But I am willing to see how it all plays out and keep an open mind. Maybe there actually are tons of people sitting on couches who are barely eeking by on the crumbs of stimulus money that will all get up and go work now.
As for your post above, it sounds like you would be willing to let people search for 8 weeks to find a comparable paying job before they need to either take a job or stop accepting unemployment. In my state, it has been 5 weeks and is would now be just 1 week.
They already had a timeframe that was 60% shorter than what you would be willing to have. And they slashed it to 1 week before someone has to take an 'acceptable job' or lose unemployment. I point this out because what you would be willing to have is 8x more than what the legislators want. That seems pretty extreme.
As for your forced pay in idea, if employers contributed too, I could see that as being something to consider. A lot of what has happened in the last 2 years since so many companies said 17 you to portions of their workforce by way of furlough when they had the chance, is that employees finally have some leverage in what has overall been a wildly imbalanced work relationship. Forcing only employees to contribute to unemployment would be another example of business being able to view employees as expendable and this time they could do it without the financial hit of paying unemployment. No thanks.
