There are a lot of misconceptions about what is happening in the labor market, and we’re here to set the record straight.
In March, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan which boosted unemployment benefits by $300 a week after the pandemic forced millions to lose their livelihoods.
The fact that the benefits boost expired in September, however, has not stopped conservatives from trying to blame the worker shortage and high rate of unemployment over the last year on these unemployment benefits – claiming workers were choosing to sit on the couch instead of going out and looking for work.
We know that’s not true.
What is true is that hundreds of thousands of women were pushed out of the workforce due to Covid-related school closures and lack of childcare.
Conservatives love to act like they’re “fiscally savvy” yet remain puzzled as to why people can’t work a job whose pay won’t even cover the cost of childcare.
What is true is that essential workers now facing the rise of the Delta variant, and who were forced to be exposed again and again with little protections and low pay, have put their foot down.
Not only that, over 700,000 people have died due to Covid-19 in the U.S. — surely conservatives would understand the impact of that on the labor force?
According to a new job report, 4.3 million workers, or 2.9 percent of the labor force, quit their jobs in August.1 Workers across industries, from healthcare to cereal factories, are standing up to lousy jobs, whether that’s defined by low pay, or abusive or dangerous workplaces. It’s no surprise that we’ve seen a rise in labor strikes.
Yet conservatives continue to hold onto their tired rhetoric of the American worker being relegated to a couch potato because of unemployment benefits — when we know that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The fact remains that millions of Americans are still suffering through an economic crisis, and now there’s one less lifeline available since these benefits expired in September.
The idea that laziness is why people stay home contradicts the “free market” ideals conservatives pretend to champion. Some economists have hypothesized that savings from higher unemployment benefits have allowed workers to look for better jobs.
Markets apply to labor, too. If supply is low and demand is high, price goes up. Conservatives seem to accept that for everything but wages.
And, with no end in sight for the pandemic, Alexandria and her colleagues have introduced a bill to extend the unemployment benefits further.
We’ll use your responses to fight for the benefits that support working families as we continue to recover from this pandemic.
Thank you,
Team AOC
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