In my last post, Our Messed-Up Healthcare System, I made a parenthetical reference to unemployment and how that deserved a rant of its own. Here, for your consideration, is that rant. And I am in Connecticut. I know it’s a little different in each state, but it’s close enough that anyone will have similar experiences.
I’ve been collecting unemployment for about four months now. It’s the second time in my life I’ve needed unemployment. The first was in 2020, during COVID, when millions of other people were let go because of the pandemic. At that time, it was easy to enroll in unemployment and easy to collect, not as easy as it should have been, but pretty easy. Basically, all I had to do was create an account on the state unemployment website and say that I need unemployment. Then, every week, I had to go back in and say I still needed it, and I got my direct deposit.
Now it’s a bit different. Enrolling is about the same, but you need to give them all this information about who your former employer was and why you’re not currently working. Then, you have to hope the former employer doesn’t contest the unemployment. Luckily, mine did not. You still need to go in every week to say that you still need unemployment, but now part of that process is proving that you’ve applied to at least three jobs that week. If you don’t apply to three jobs, you don’t get a check. On top of that, you need to answer a bunch of questions about whether you worked at all, made any money, turned down an offer of employment, and things like that. A yes to any of those questions can disqualify you from unemployment. It’s a much harder process.
Another difference between COVID and now is that unemployment was open-ended during COVID, but now you only get a year of benefits. And you don’t even really get a year because there is a dollar cap. When you hit that cap, unemployment ends. I’m going to run out of benefits in about six weeks even though that will only be about half a year on unemployment.
That was more of an explanation than a rant, so let the ranting begin now. It should be incredibly easy for anyone to collect unemployment. As soon as an employer stops paying payroll taxes on an employee, they should be auto enrolled in unemployment, and they should stay on unemployment until a new company starts paying payroll taxes on them. The only thing the receiver should have to do is say whether they want direct deposit or a check.
You probably gathered this from the last paragraph, but there shouldn’t be a cap on benefits or a time limit. People should be able to collect for as long as they need the benefit.
The unemployment benefit should be higher. It only pays about 50% of your former wage. For a regular person, that’s not going to be nearly enough to live on. I’ve been falling further and further behind since I started collecting.
Did you know they take income tax out of your unemployment benefit? Well, they do. So, it doesn’t even really cover 50% of your former income because of the tax. It simply shouldn’t count as income. It’s a benefit, not a salary.
Finally, people should be able to collect no matter why they are not working. Now you don’t get unemployment if you are fired for cause nor if you quit voluntarily. That’s some garbage right there. Quitting voluntarily doesn’t mean you don’t need the benefits. And being fired for cause doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t deserve the benefits. There are a lot of causes. Some may be illegal, but many aren’t. The two groups shouldn’t be tied together. I kind of understand why we wouldn’t give unemployment to the people fired for illegal actions. It just feels icky. But unemployment is basically stimulus, so they should give it away easily.
Of course, all of this would be moot if we had a universal basic income like we should, but that’s a different topic. For now, just know that we have a bulky, dysfunctional dinosaur of an unemployment system. Not only does it not give people enough to survive, but it also gives the pittance it does give in the least efficient manner imaginable. We need to do better.
