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Study Contradicts Steven Mnuchin Claim That Lazy Workers Choose Unemployment Over Jobs
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday was peddling his claim on TV that enhanced unemployment benefits encourage lazy American workers to sit at home. But a new Yale University study shows him wrong.
Last week, Mnuchin insisted it’s “not fair” to taxpayers to pay workers to “sit home.” Critics pointed out that workers are taxpayers, and they’re home because there is no work.
On Sunday, Mnuchin complained that workers were being “overpaid” by the $600 a week in extra unemployment benefits that expired on Friday. In “certain cases we’re paying people more to stay home than to work,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” That’s “created issues in the entire economy,” he added.
But the study by Yale economists found “no evidence” that enhanced benefits authorized by Congress in March decreased employment.
People who were collecting enhanced benefits actually resumed working at a similar and even quicker rate than others who were not eligible for the extra aid once work was available, according to the study, “Employment Effects of Unemployment Insurance Generosity During the Pandemic.”
“The data do not show a relationship between benefit generosity and employment paths after the CARES Act” enhancement was provided, said economics professor Joseph Altonji, a co-author of the report.
The researchers found that even workers who received larger increases in their unemployment benefits relative to their wages did not experience greater declines in employment once jobs were available.
White House resistance to renewing the aid is a major sticking point in the new COVID-19 relief package being negotiated in Congress.
The plunge in income with the disappearance of the enhanced benefits is expected to result in mortgage defaults and evictions for some 20 million Americans. It will also damage businesses in an economy overwhelmingly fueled by consumer spending.
