A couple of quick observations.....
1. Unemployment is not welfare, no more than SSI is. You and your employer are forced to pay a premium every month to have it. It is literally a mandatory insurance policy issued by the government.
2. The greatest impediment to workers returning to the workforce is that schools and daycare basically unavailable. Most of the missing workforce is young (’20s-’30s). One parent is now forced to be home while their children are home.
Are some taking advantage, of course? But the vast majority are home for other causes....
When you have an additional $600 pet week on top of unemployment, you need to pay $30/hr to get people off their butts and working again. That’s stupid and unsustainable.
If my kids were little and I could stay home with them instead of hauling them to day care at the butt-crack of dawn while I worked 10 hours a day in a factory, I’d sure enough stay home with them as long as I could.
Kids and a home used to be considered a respectable full-time job.