• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

As U.S. unemployment benefits end, firms hope for a wave of applicants

September 3, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 3, 2021

By Ben Klayman and Timothy Aeppel

(Reuters) – Joe Perkins, head of Michigan-based auto supplier Mobex Global, marked Labor Day weekend this year as more than a holiday or a symbolic nod to U.S. workers.

It now carries real-world significance as the lapse of federal unemployment benefits on Sept. 4 brings hope of a surge in job applicants to fill open positions that have kept his company 10% short of its hiring goals despite wage hikes and other incentives.

“We’ve tried everything. We’ve tried wage adjustments. We’ve tried busing people from remote locations … We are out of initiatives,” Perkins said, adding he still needs to add around 100 employees to the current workforce of around 1,000. “I’m hoping that the reduction of (unemployment insurance) has a material impact on workforce availability. That’s what we are really banking on.”

If the U.S. economy’s behavior in 2021 holds any lessons for Perkins, though, he may be disappointed as the hiring needs of firms compete with a surge in coronavirus infections https://ift.tt/3jtqSZ2.

The gap between job openings and hiring rates, with as many open positions than there are people unemployed https://ift.tt/3gVPubd, has been one of many puzzles posed by a U.S. recovery that proceeded faster than expected on some fronts, but still lags in terms of employment https://ift.tt/3h1CJw5. Through July there were about 5.7 million jobs still missing from before the pandemic and 3 million additional unemployed.

From top economic policymakers to human resource chiefs to small business owners with “help wanted” signs posted in shop windows, the nationwide expiration of federal unemployment benefits on Saturday has been anticipated as the day when the true state of the U.S. job market becomes apparent, cleared of whatever influence the weekly unemployment payments have had on people’s decisions about work.

The emerging consensus among economists, however, is that the availability of benefits has mattered less than a host of other pandemic concerns like risks from COVID-19 itself and scarce and pricey childcare.

A ‘THAWING’ UNDER WAY?

About half of U.S. states decided to end the federal benefit during June or July, arguing it kept people from returning to work. There has been little evidence that has emerged since of a surge in job growth, though various studies concluded some reshuffling of the labor market ensued.

For instance, the unemployed in states that ended benefits early were slightly more likely to find jobs over the summer. At the same time, those states were less successful in attracting people from the sidelines of the labor market into either employment or a job search.

That could mean the labor “supply shock,” the human capital element of shortages that have confounded the global economic reopening, continues longer than expected, and the loss of benefits becomes a net drag on growth. States were told by President Joe Biden they could use other federal money to extend the benefits, but none have announced plans to do so yet.

“We don’t expect the end of emergency (unemployment) benefits to lead to an immediate jump in employment and in the near-term expect it will weigh more on personal income and spending,” wrote Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist for Oxford Economics.

At its peak in May 2020, the unemployment program was funneling an additional $600 a week to 25 million people, a critical $15 billion weekly infusion that kept household incomes intact amid the largest-ever jump in U.S. joblessness and allowed people to buy groceries, pay rents and mortgages, and even splurge on new cars and appliances.

It was cut to $300 a week, and the number of recipients is down to around 9.2 million.

Efforts to disentangle how that money influenced labor market choices have generally concluded that other factors – fear of the virus or lack of available childcare, for example – have been more top-of-mind.

Still, companies hold out hope that the great worker shortage of 2021 https://ift.tt/38D2NZH will ease soon.

David Reilly, president of plastic products maker United Solutions, said monthly job applications at his company’s Sardis, Mississippi, plant more than doubled from 40 to 90 between May, before the state axed the federal unemployment payments, and August.

He said he has already detected a “thawing” at his other location in Leominster, Massachusetts, with applications picking up.

“It’s a continuous cycle” of hiring and recruiting, said Reilly, and one he now hopes will let him get ahead of a curve that has left him about 50 workers short at each of his plants.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit and Tim Aeppel in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Howard Schneider in Washington; Editing by Dan Burns and Matthew Lewis)

Source Link As U.S. unemployment benefits end, firms hope for a wave of applicants

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. Tennis – Azarenka calls for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations
  2. Daimler expects Mercedes Q3 sales significantly below Q2 – report
  3. Motor racing-Bottas rules out imminent announcement on his F1 future
  4. U.S. to give Ukraine more than $45 million in additional humanitarian aid -Blinken

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Think The Great Pyramid Of Giza Has Four Sides? Think Again
  • Why Are Car Tires Black If Rubber Is Naturally White?
  • China’s Terra-Cotta Warriors: What You Might Not Know
  • Do People Really Not Know What Paprika Is Made From?
  • There Is Something Odd Going On Inside The Moon, Watch These Snails Lay Eggs Through Their Necks, And Much More This Week
  • Inside Denisova Cave: The Meeting Point Of Neanderthals, Denisovans, And Us
  • What Is The 2-2-2 Rule And Can It Save Your Relationship?
  • Bat Cave Adventure Turns Hazardous: 12 Infected With Histoplasmosis
  • The Real Reasons We Don’t Eat Turkey Eggs
  • Physics Offers A Way To Avoid Tears When Cutting Onions. The Method Can Stop Pathogens Being Spread Too.
  • Push One End Of A Long Pole, When Does The Other End Move?
  • There’s A Vast Superplume Hidden Under East Africa That May Be Causing It To Split
  • Fast Leaf Hypothesis: Scientists Discover Sneaky Way Trees Use Geometry To Hog Nutrients
  • Watch: Rare Footage Captures Two Vulnerable New Zealand Species “Having A Scrap”
  • Beautiful Elk Spotted In Northern Colorado Has 1-In-100,000 Coloring
  • Mesmerizing Cosmic Dust Rainbow Caught By NASA’s PUNCH Mission
  • Endangered “Forgotten” Penguins Lay 1.5 Eggs At A Time In Bizarre Breeding Strategy
  • Watch Spellbinding Footage Of A “Fog Tsunami” Rolling Over Lake Michigan
  • What Happened When Scientists Exposed Human Cells To 5G? Absolutely Nothing
  • How Many Supernovae Are Happening In The Universe Every Second? More Than You Think
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version