Welfare is delaying workers’ return — and Build Back Better would make it worse

New York Post ^ | November 29, 2021 | Jonathan Ingram and Hayden Dublois

[karpov]

Where are the workers? On welfare, which now pays more than work for millions of Americans.

A new study by the Foundation for Government Accountability shows that amid the pandemic, available welfare benefits have become so generous that it makes financial sense for many of the unemployed to stay home rather than work.

President Joe Biden and Democrats are trying to extend this backward system in the Build Back Better Act. If they do, a generation of families will suffer on the economy’s sidelines.

Employers are desperate to fill a near-record high 10.4 million open jobs, and as a result, average hourly wages are also at record highs and growing at the fastest rate in 40 years. Despite these opportunities, labor-force participation has dramatically fallen and remains near its 45-year low.

Some 4.5 million Americans are still missing from the labor force, and yet month after month, expected job creation has failed to materialize. The primary reason: Enrollment in welfare and welfare-like programs has skyrocketed, set new records and remained stubbornly high. Many of those programs were significantly expanded over the past two years, discouraging work and slowing economic recovery.

Consider an unemployed single parent with two children. Through a combination of welfare-style programs, he or she can collect more than $3,700 per month in government benefits for at least half the year (and until the fall could make even more over 12 months). At an annualized rate, that’s nearly $45,000 a year for someone who’s staying home rather than returning to work. It’s nearly three times the earnings from a full-time minimum-wage job and more than the median American job pays.

This money is made by stacking the benefits from just four welfare and tax-credit programs. (Other state and federal programs can make welfare even more generous.)

[Mouton]

Let me figure this out. Get up at 6, prep for work, have breakfast, commute to work to be there at 8 for $16 per hour. OR, sleep in till ten, roll out and watch the view and have a few brews for lunch, tinker around on face book till 4 and then go meet my pals for happy hour after cashing my various welfare and stimulus checks. tough choice there but most will take door 2.

[millenial4freedom]

I'm not an apologist for the 'Build Back Broke' Act, but aren't most of these 4 million plus individuals people who decided to retire early and/or people who can't get hired because of jab/mask mandates?

[Theoria]

‘Workers’, low skilled, have vast amounts of leverage at the moment.

There is a paradigm shift in various workforce's now. People have quit to be their own boss, work from home, work on demand, day trading, automation, etc.

But, because of these ‘we need workers’ articles, the siren call of more immigration will get louder.

[ridesthemiles]

THIS drivel required a “STUDY”?????/

I went to a one room school thru 7th grade & I knew this ——MONTHS AGO.

[WKUHilltopper]

Build Back Broker...that’s the plan, comrade.

[EBH]

It is OK...

It isn’t welfare...it is the mandate.

Millions of people are becoming self-employed