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Giving Compass' Take:
• Stephen A. Wander and Christopher T. King outline what the national Unemployment Insurance could look like.
• What role can you play in supporting policies that support equitable COVID-19 recovery?
• Learn how racial disparities in unemployment insurance curb COVID recovery.
This paper first makes the case for comprehensive reform of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program in the United States, exploring the many ways in which the program has failed in recent decades to accomplish both its macroeconomic goal of economic stabilization and its microeconomic goal of temporary income restoration for workers laid off through no fault of their own. It then outlines options for reform and recommends a uniform, much more consistent national UI program that would be administered by the Social Security Administration consistently and equitably across all states. The national UI program would be phased in over two years beginning in 2022. This paper also presents a number of recommended complementary reforms, including a JobSeeker Assistance (JSA) program to cover groups that have traditionally been left out of the regular program, enhanced funding for UI and Employment Service (ES) administration and services, better coordination with workforce development programs, as well as Universal Adjustment Assistance (UAA). It ends with a list of immediate steps that should be taken in 2021 without legislation to transition to the National UI Program, including developing model state UI application, payment and related systems that can be exported to states to allow them to avoid wasteful investments in 53 different IT systems during the transition.
The Unemployment Insurance program was initially created in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s to address two primary goals: the macroeconomic goal of economic stabilization, and the microeconomic goal of temporary, partial income restoration for workers laid off through no fault of their own. For many years, the program served as a critical part of the nation’s arsenal for dealing with recessions. But in recent decades, the UI program has come up short. While Congress and numerous Administrations have devised various improvements, they have been limited at best, and the program remains inadequate.