Its tough for someone who needs an income to pay his bills to accept a $400 a week job, if it means losing a $500 a week unemployment check, particularly if the unemployment isn’t going to run out for nearly 2 years.
Such a long period of free money has to be a deterrent for a lot of folks to actually move on this.
I know it’s tough but a lot of the unemployed, and I know a few, are taking in extra money under the table.
Where is UI $500 a week? It is $300 here and that does not meet the bills. I have tapped savings while looking for a new job.
I have suggested that instead of paying unemployment, that the government pay the difference between what unemployment would be and the job that a worker can find. 26 weeks of unemployment, and then X weeks of “gap” pay.
The advantage is that it lessens the cost to the treasury, but it also gets people off the dime in finding a new place of employment, and many of them will find they can move up the income ladder in that new place if they keep their nose to the grindstone.
I can imagine that being a means for emerging companies with lower pay scales to find qualified, trained workers and strengthen their businesses. Also a way for the newbies to move up in a new world toward what they were formerly making.
When that “gap pay” comes to an end, then the encouragement would be for that family to find an additional part-time job. Our parents and grandparents worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. We aren’t better than them, and we aren’t princes and princesses.
But it all is focused on WORK and not on handout.