Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was among the two dozen GOP chief executives who rejected the Biden administration’s hefty COVID-19 unemployment benefits in an effort to spur the labor market back to pre-pandemic levels.
Their theory was that virus-driven welfare was hampering the recovery by making it lucrative for people to just stay home. A new Morning Consult poll indicates they were right.
The pollster’s survey, released Wednesday, found that 13 percent of respondents turned down jobs during the pandemic because they received “enough money from unemployment insurance without having to work.”
Now, 13 percent may not sound like a lot. But it was the second-most stated reason, behind child-care obligations (14 percent).
Moreover, with 14.1 million people receiving such benefits, that amounts to an estimated 1.84 million people.
That’s roughly the population of Idaho.
Morning Consult noted, “Just under a third of UI [unemployment insurance] recipients have turned down job offers during the pandemic,” but 45 percent “of those who turned down a job offer cited the generosity of UI benefits as a major reason why they did not accept the job offer.”
That included the 13 percent who cited it as a direct reason.
President Joe Biden’s much-ballyhooed American Rescue Plan added $300 in weekly benefits atop state unemployment payments.
The Washington Examiner pointed out that the average unemployment payment across the country is $387 a week.
So, with Biden’s extra dollop, that came to $687 a week on average.
The Examiner pointed out that comes to an hourly wage of $17.17.
For context, that more than doubles the federal minimum wage, is $3 an hour above the highest state-level minimum wage (California’s), and exceeds the $15 an hour Democrats are perpetually campaigning for.
Back in May, Biden had said “we don’t see much evidence” people stayed home because of this pandemic-driven form of the left-wing universal basic income scheme.
The poll was taken in June. The federal benefits are scheduled to expire in September. Which led to another nugget that bolstered the argument made by DeSantis and other Republicans.
Morning Consult noted 40 percent of those whose benefits expired in under a month “feel a lot of pressure” to fund a job. Comparatively, just 26 percent of those whose benefits expire in three months felt that way.
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