Nearly 900,000 Americans in Alabama, Mississippi and 11 other Republican-led states are set to see their unemployment checks slashed dramatically starting in June, as GOP governors seek to restrict jobless benefits in an effort to force more people to return to work.
The cuts are likely to fall hardest on more than half a million people who benefit from stimulus programs adopted by Congress at the height of the pandemic, including one targeting those who either are self-employed or work on behalf of gig-economy companies such as Uber. Beginning next month, many of these workers are likely to receive no aid at all.
The looming cliff reflects an emerging campaign on the part of GOP leaders to combat what they see as a national worker shortage. Governors in states including Mississippi, Montana and Tennessee contend that generous federal benefits parceled out over the past year have deterred people from returning to their old positions now that the public-health crisis is waning.
The reality is more complicated, labor experts say. The slowdown in hiring may instead reflect workers' concerns about their safety and difficulties in obtaining childcare, or their trouble finding suitable positions in hard-hit industries like tourism on top of mounting frustration over wages they see as too low. That means the loss of unemployment benefits over the next month threatens to inflict new financial harm on those who are already say they're struggling.
At least 13 GOP-led states so far have announced plans to slash benefits: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming.
Starting next month, roughly 273,000 of these states' workers are set to see their payments fall by $300 each week, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal claims data released Thursday. Millions of Americans have received the extra allotment as a result of a federal stimulus program Congress adopted earlier this year. In these 13 GOP-led states, however, out-of-work residents soon will be able to collect only as much as their unemployment insurance programs allowed prior to the pandemic, which in some parts of the country is well below poverty-level wages.
For a second group of about 268,000 workers, their governors' cuts mean they stand to lose all of their benefits outright. This includes out-of-work Uber drivers and others who are self employed. These workers had obtained aid for the first time under a second stimulus initiative, known as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, but their states are ending participation in the effort.
A final group of about 340,000 workers who collect traditional unemployment benefits each week similarly may see their benefits reduced to zero. These Americans currently rely on a federal program that pays them extra weeks of jobless support even if they have exhausted their states' annual allotments. Republican governors are cutting their participation in this effort as well, leaving workers who have been unemployed for prolonged periods with potentially no options remaining to obtain aid.
More governors are expected to follow the lead of Arkansas and other GOP-led states, which combined with recent drops in new state unemployment claims, could change the total number of Americans affected. On Thursday, the Labor Department said that 473,000 Americans had filed new unemployment insurance claims last week, marking another pandemic low.
