Biden Says ‘Generous’ Unemployment Benefits Not Responsible for Biggest Jobs Report Miss in...

https://fee.org/articles/biden-says-generous-unemployment-benefits-not-responsible-for-biggest-jobs-report-miss-in-history-he-s-wrong/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020_FEEDaily
Following a dismal April jobs report, President Joe Biden took to the podium Monday to defend his administration’s economic policies. “There’s been a lot of discussion since Friday’s report that people are being paid to stay home rather than go to work," Biden said. “We don’t see much evidence of that.”
A US employment report released Friday showed the economy added just 266,000 jobs in April, down substantially from the 770,000 jobs added in March and about one quarter of what forecasters had predicted.

The jobs miss comes two months after Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that included a six-month expansion of federal unemployment benefits, which pay unemployed workers an additional $300 per week on top of their state unemployment benefits. These increased benefits mean in many cases people make less money returning to work, which economists warned prior to passage of the legislation would create a disincentive for workers to return to the labor force.
“Expanding unemployment benefits during a recession has a predictable result: slower employment recovery,” Texas Tech economist Alex Salter told FEE in February. “We should be helping people get back to work—not making it more financially attractive to stay home.”