Unemployment/wages/economy/the future/I need more coffee

[Bootsie]

8 minutes ago, HeartString said:

While I agree completely, that wasn’t an option because most state unemployment insurance agencies have such old computer system they literally cannot handle that kind of computation.  Even just adding 1 set amount to everyone nearly broke some systems, they were calling in people who knew how to program in 40 yr old coding languages.  To cap it at your normal earnings would have meant delays of months and months during the height of the shut downs.  This was a “do the best you can with what you have” situation. States should have been updating their systems all along, but a crisis isn’t the time to spend years overhauling whole system.  

From a programming issue, would it have been any more difficult to program that the federal add-on was 10% to what the state base would be (or some other percent) rather than $400 flat amount for each person?  

I do think this was a huge burden to put on state unemployment system with no notice.  The federal intervention did not only impact the size of the check, it extended the people who would get benefits beyond who would usually qualify.  So, the questions that states had that would cause an application to be accepted or rejected also had to be changed.  All at a time when unemployment agencies were getting more people applying in an hour than they usually get in a year!

[HeartString]

11 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

From a programming issue, would it have been any more difficult to program that the federal add-on was 10% to what the state base would be (or some other percent) rather than $400 flat amount for each person?  

I do think this was a huge burden to put on state unemployment system with no notice.  The federal intervention did not only impact the size of the check, it extended the people who would get benefits beyond who would usually qualify.  So, the questions that states had that would cause an application to be accepted or rejected also had to be changed.  All at a time when unemployment agencies were getting more people applying in an hour than they usually get in a year!

What was the other choice though?  We didn’t want people working at the beginning when we didn’t know anything, and no one can live on unemployment, in Florida the max is less than $300 a week with most people getting nowhere near that. A friend of mine was getting $80 a week from the state part of unemployment.  
 

I have no idea why it was so hard for the states to adapt. I saw the the reports at the beginning about hard it was and they didn’t have programmers because the languages were so old.  I believe the state level people who said the programming was difficult. Some states were already delayed getting the federal money out by months, a more complicated scheme would have meant longer delays which would have meant more families struggling longer.  
 

ETA:  this was done with Rep majorities in Congress and a Rep president.  I’m sure this wasn’t the way they would have done it if there was a better way.  The fact that this is what they came up with makes me think it was the best of bad options.  

Edited April 30, 2021 by HeartString

[frogger]

I don't see why they should have added to it at all. People lose their jobs all the time and have to deal with regular unemployment rates. They still received multiple stimulus checks like everyone else so they still were getting more money than a person who lost their job on a regular year. People who lose their job on a regular year also struggle to pay bills, stay in school, yadda yadda yadda.

I would have preferred the extra money going to people required to quarantine. There were people who quarantined for a month but weren't unemployed so simply lost money. When you are living on the edge you may not bother. There were a lot of people who felt they couldn't not work, or wouldn't test because of the ramifications. Incentives matter and if you want people to quarantine for the benefit of society, society should help them out.

[Bootsie]

6 minutes ago, HeartString said:

What was the other choice though?  We didn’t want people working at the beginning when we didn’t know anything, and no one can live on unemployment, in Florida the max is less than $300 a week with most people getting nowhere near that. A friend of mine was getting $80 a week from the state part of unemployment.  
 

I have no idea why it was so hard for the states to adapt. I saw the the reports at the beginning about hard it was and they didn’t have programmers because the languages were so old.  I believe the state level people who said the programming was difficult. Some states were already delayed getting the federal money out by months, a more complicated scheme would have meant longer delays which would have meant more families struggling longer.  

I think there were many other choices.  I am not sure why 10%, or 20% or some other scaled amount would be that much more difficult to program.  

It was difficult for states to adapt for a number of reasons:  

 1)  They had to extend benefits to people who did not usually qualify.  Their computerized questions would automatically disqualify people.  That all had to be changed.  For example, states were all of a sudden supposed to cover people who were self-employed.

2) The benefit level changed--a new calculation was required.  The information coming from the federal government was not clear and was changing.  They did not know exactly what they were supposed to be doing and were working with a moving target.

3) Record numbers of people were contacting the agencies.  When you have more people contacting the agency in a day than your system is set up to handle in a year; you will have problems.   People talk about hospitals being overwhelmed, the rise in volume that unemployment offices were dealing with was MUCH higher than that.  Just as producers of masks, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper couldn't just have a lot more one day than they did before, the unemployment offices could not scale up without any notice

4) The people who work at the unemployment offices were dealing with the same pandemic situation that other people were dealing with.   Were they supposed to go into the office?  Can things get set up for them to work from home?  There kids weren't in school.  The day cares closed.  Somehow we didn't want people to work during a pandemic--except the people who work at the unemployment offices and they were expected to WORK their normal job and more.

To me, it is amazing that most unemployment offices were able to do as well as they did given the environment they were working with.  

[SKL]

During shutdown, I could understand the special deal, but I think it was too much for too long.

I think part of the reason was politics / elections.

Of course there have also been many people who got nothing despite various kinds of hardship.

[HeartString]

13 minutes ago, SKL said:

During shutdown, I could understand the special deal, but I think it was too much for too long.

I think part of the reason was politics / elections.

Of course there have also been many people who got nothing despite various kinds of hardship.

I think you’re right about the politics/elections part, but we also didn’t know the future.  How fast vaccines would come out, how effective they would be, how the supply and distribution would go.  There were a lot of unknowns even a couple of months ago.  They needed to plan for the worse and hope for the best.  We’d be in a different place if vaccines were less effective or if there had been a supply hiccup.  As it is young people just became eligible for the vaccine.  I think the Sept end date looks about right right now. 

We really got incredibly lucky in a lot of ways and are far better off than other countries. 

[Bootsie]

On 4/29/2021 at 2:53 PM, SKL said:

Anyone know the estimated number of people whose SSNs are being used for fraudulent unemployment claims?  I wonder if that's also skewing the overall numbers?  I know it's a pretty serious issue, and I personally know at least one person who got a 1099 for unemployment benefits she neither applied for nor received.

Given this discussion, it is interesting that I just got an email from my employer that reads:

"Nationally, there has been a significant increase in fraudulent unemployment claims.  Criminals, often working overseas and outside the authority of local law enforcement, can easily purchase personal information from criminal sources and use that information to file claims.  There have been fraudulent claims involving XXX employees.  The XXX Human Resources Office has been extremely vigilant and has been working with the Texas Workforce Commission to identify fraudulent claims and prevent the claims from negatively impacting affected employees."

It is a lengthy email that goes on to provide various sources at the state level and through the employer to deal with this issue.

 

 

[ieta_cassiopeia]

There's been tens of millions of pounds' worth of detected fraudulent unemployment claims in the UK too, so it's no surprise that happened in the USA too.

Technically, work search requirements were never suspended in the UK. However, the JobCentre's ability to monitor them was severely curtailed, especially given that a large proportion of jobseekers lost their access to the internet at about the same time as the JobCentre offices shut (because the libraries also shut, and many people weren't able to maintain their smartphones or landline internet connections - or never had them in the first place), and the phone line was shut the previous year. Also, there were so few vacancies that for most weeks, it was impossible for the average jobseeker to spend 35 hours productively searching for work. (For several weeks in a row, there were fewer than 10 vacancies total in a 90-minute travel range of me, for the keywords in my work search requirements, on the websites approved for me to search. Despite my being qualified in half-a-dozen different lines of work).

So how were all these fraudulent claims detected? Some were spotted because there is a digital platform for recording the work search. While not as helpful as the Word document I was required to take to the JobCentre pre-COVID, it can tell a lot about what is going on. If, for example, "someone" just posted the same vacancy, in the same words, as 100 other accounts on a day, they're probably all fraudulent (either from the outset, or they were initially-honest but hacked later on).

Others have been picked up as more JobCentre have been able to return to work. People who ask for additional assistance, get flagged up for something else (e.g. forgetting to update their monthly income) or are randomly chosen have for the past few months received a telephone appointment. Turns out it's harder to hide fraudulent activity during a conversation with a job advisor...

Officially, unemployment is 4.9%, which is 1% higher than in the middle of the first lockdown this time last year. It's likely to get worse when extended business support ends in September, because furloughed people aren't counted as unemployed, and 1 in 9 people are currently furloughed. It's assumed that at least some of them will have no company to go back to in September, thus will become unemployed. Also, there are a lot of very part-time self-employed people out there (those whose combined self-employment and work search activities total at least 35 hours can get unemployment benefit if they would otherwise earn less than the unemployment figure).

Vacancies are starting to appear for jobs other than teachers and doctors, but not many, and employers are able to be very picky. The only dishwasher job I've seen so far required 3 years' prior experience in the same job. For minimum wage, and a requirement to provide one's own transport due to public transport currently being limited in that pub's area. Jobs that display applicant counts are very uneven. Some who are being too demanding or badly-served by public transport struggle to get even 5 candidates. Some in the same line of work with vaguely reasonable requirements in the middle of towns are getting over 100 applicants.

[Carrie12345]

28 minutes ago, ieta_cassiopeia said:

Some who are being too demanding or badly-served by public transport struggle to get even 5 candidates. Some in the same line of work with vaguely reasonable requirements in the middle of towns are getting over 100 applicants.

I haven’t even thought to look at transportation disparities in my county.