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In PA, it’s called “partials”. Probably every state already does this. If you’re not working full time you can get reduced unemployment compensation under certain conditions.

NC does not.
What a silly idea.

In PA, it’s called “partials”. Probably every state already does this. If you’re not working full time you can get reduced unemployment compensation under certain conditions.

This does not under any circumstance seem to be a good idea to me. Employers typically provide some sort of fringe package to employees. The cost of that fringe package does not typically change significantly with the amount of pay. So the lower the amount of pay, the higher percentage fringe takes up.

For example,

If an employer has an employee who makes $50K per year and has a fringe package worth $12K (1X salary life ins, AD&D, medical and dental, along with a 3% match on 401k), fringe takes up 24% of the employee's salary. Total compensation = 62K.
If that employer decides to cut the employee's workweek to 30 hours, the employee would then only make $40K per year, but his fringe package would decrease in value by only about $500 or so (medical / dental would be the same, life insurance and 401k match would decrease). The percentage would be 29% and the total compensation would be $51.5K.
So for reducing a employee's direct compensation by 20%, the employer only reduces his cost by only 17%.
Now lets say that the employer needs to have an extra person on staff to make up for the lost hours (1 extra person for 4 lost). For 160 hours of work with employees working 40 hours/week, the employer has to pay out $248K. For 150 hours (10 less) of work with employees working 30 hours per week, the same employer would have to pay out $257.5K -- in other words, 10 hours less work and almost $10K more in expense.

Employers know this: that's why they use overtime rather than new hires.

It would be nice if politicians could figure out basic math like that.