President Biden spoke at the White House earlier this week to address an unsettling national trend – millions of jobs going unfilled in an economy still struggling to right itself. The president couldn’t deny the existence of the paradox: His own administration’s numbers show that millions of Americans are drawing unemployment while millions of jobs are going unfilled. But he and his top economic officials dismissed the most obvious explanation for April’s dismal job numbers – generous unemployment benefits eroding the incentive to work. “We don’t see much evidence of that,” Biden said.
It was a line dutifully echoed by his designee to run the Commerce Department, the Cabinet department tasked with compiling employment numbers. But it’s a disingenuous argument. The Commerce Department, through the Bureau of Labor Statistics, derives employment numbers by compiling two surveys of employment – one completed by roughly 144,000 employers and another completed by approximately 54,000 American citizens. Neither of these surveys actually ask if an employee has been offered a job and turned it down. And it’s awfully hard to find evidence of something when you’re not actually looking for it.
The president’s remarks Monday were in response to an April jobs report showing that only 266,000 Americans rejoined the workforce at a time when employers coast to coast are reporting that they have job openings but can’t find willing workers. As if to underscore the sheer perverseness of the situation, the following day the government released data showing that job openings in March are up by 597,000 – to a staggering 8.1 million. This is the highest number of job openings since the government started tracking them at the turn of the century. It could be the highest ever.
You don’t need evidence to know that incentives matter. Common sense will suffice. But there is evidence, which I’ve witnessed first-hand. --->READ MORE HERE
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| J. Scott Applewhite/AP |
Congressional Republicans are pushing governors to stop paying out $300-per-week federal unemployment supplements that businesses say is handcuffing the post-pandemic recovery — and to use the cash for “back-to-work bonuses” instead.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy launched the messaging effort hours after the Biden administration put the onus on struggling businesses to woo employees back to the workplace with higher wages.
“Our local job creators should not have to compete with the federal government for workers,” McCarthy wrote in a letter signed by Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.), Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) — three states whose governors have resisted the complaints of business owners who say the extra federal cash is keeping job-seekers home.
Last week’s unexpectedly dismal jobs-growth report added fuel to those concerns. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories:
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