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n Friday, a Labor Department report revealed that just 194,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in September. That’s well short of expectations; economists surveyed by Bloomberg anticipated 500,000 new jobs.Teasing out the specific causes of the disappointing number is challenging, but a favorite Republican hobbyhorse for the tepid labor market is looking a little lame. For months, conservatives insisted that enhanced government unemployment benefits disincentivized work. All these folks are sitting on their resumes, the theory goes, because Uncle Sam is being too generous. Once the unemployed have their allowances docked, they’ll be forced to fill one of the millions of jobs on offer.
Senator Ted Cruz recently articulated this point with a level of nuance typical of barstool commentary, “Um, get a job,” he wrote on Twitter in response to a story about expiring unemployment benefits. (The Texas Republican, somehow, won the US National Debating Championship as an undergrad at Princeton.)
So widespread was this reasoning in GOP circles, that 25 states ended enhanced unemployment benefits earlier than they could have, leaving hundred of millions of dollars of funding from March’s American Rescue Plan on the table.
The expanded benefits expired for all American in early September.
Guess what? There’s still a huge labor shortage. In fact, last month saw the fewest jobs added to the economy since February.
The fact that the end of expanded unemployment benefits didn’t move the jobs needle in September shouldn’t come as a surprise. A month ago, the Wall Street Journal noted that the 25 states that ended the assistance early “have so far seen about the same job growth as states that continued offering the pandemic-related extra aid.”
“‘Is [unemployment insurance] the key thing that’s holding back the labor market recovery?’ The answer is no, definitely not, based on the available data,” Peter Ganong, a University of Chicago economist, told the Journal.
With those words, Ganong revealed that millions of Americans had their benefits needlessly cut – in the middle of a pandemic – for the sake of a failed experiment.
And here’s the most maddening part of it: the root cause of the weak job market is obvious. To amend a famous phrase uttered first by James Carville, it’s the coronavirus, stupid.
A resurgence in the virus – caused by both the emergence of the highly transmissible delta variant and the obstinance of Americans who refuse to get vaccinated – has restrained economic growth. Spending on travel, tourism and hospitality is lukewarm. A prolonged period of telecommuting is decimating businesses that depend on spending from office workers. COVID-19 outbreaks at factories have strained supply chains, impacting sectors of the economy as diverse as automobile manufacturing and apparel.
And of course, millions of Americans are genuinely afraid of contracting the virus, which is still infecting 100,000 people a day. In the risk-reward calculus of applying for a job – especially a low wage job – the pandemic tips the scale.
So to heal the economy, we must defeat the virus. Politicians that stand in the way of safety measures like vaccine mandates or universal mask wearing in schools aren’t just endangering their constituents’ lives, they’re also hurting their pocketbooks.
President Joe Biden hammered home this point on Thursday. Appearing in a Chicago suburb, he warned that if the nation fails to increase its vaccination rate, it faces “endless months of chaos in our hospitals, damage to our economy and anxiety in our schools and empty restaurants, much less commerce.”
In other words, public health policy is inextricably intertwined with economic policy. We can’t solve the myriad problems facing this nation if we let a deadly virus continue to rage.
Lindaland
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posted October 08, 2021 12:23 PM
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