Current Events > I read that 2/3 of people receiving unemployment now are making more than when

(+) Yeah! (+)

...they were working. Does this number surprise you? What does it usually avg. out to like 15 bucks an hour or something like that?

It varies so much state to state, my wife got laid off due to the virus and she was making about $550 a week in Tennessee. We looked into unemployment and it was going to pay her $134 a week before that $600 bonus. We pretty much opted against it because I make enough to keep us financially okay, and didn't want to leech off of the system if we didn't have to. If she did collect though, it would have been $734 a week.

It's kind of nuts though when that bonus runs out you only get $134 which is more than a third less than what she made.

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Government: hey people who arent going out every day risking getting sick heres 600 a week to watch netflix and (temporarily) contribute nothing to society

Government: oh hey workers, we see you. What? I said we see you. You actually want more? Hahahahaha

clown ass world

In Missouri the last time I drew unemployment was when the economy took a big shit in 2001 after 9/11. The max you could draw then I believe was $310 a week. When I drew it this time around during my furlough the max was $320 a week. 19 years of inflation and the cost of living going up, unemployment add a whopping 10 bucks.

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ScazarMeltex posted...

In Missouri the last time I drew unemployment was when the economy took a big shit in 2001 after 9/11. The max you could draw then I believe was $310 a week. When I drew it this time around during my furlough the max was $320 a week. 19 years of inflation and the cost of living going up, unemployment add a whopping 10 bucks.

you weren't eligible for that extra 600 a week or whatever?

VVALLBOUNCE posted...

Government: hey people who arent going out every day risking getting sick heres 600 a week to watch netflix and (temporarily) contribute nothing to society

Government: oh hey workers, we see you. What? I said we see you. You actually want more? Hahahahaha

clown ass world

It really is fucked up. Usually when something makes this little sense, something sinister is going on.

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Lost_All_Senses posted...

It really is fucked up. Usually when something makes this little sense, something sinister is going on.

When I first heard everyones unemployment was getting a 600 dollar a week boost while the essential heroes get zero dollars and zero cents for the entire thing, I didnt even entertain it as a serious idea but just a joke, then I learned it was actually real. I was so fired up angry for two hours straight I did not stop pacing back and forth and cursed at least 5,000 times.

Its their usual unemployment rate plus an additional $600, averaging what would be a salary of over $45k.

Pretty fucking insane, big mistake making it that much lol


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I am.

It's pretty gross people are mad that the unemployed may actually have enough money to live on(until the extra amount expires July 31st and they're back to being f***ed).
Be mad you're not being paid what you deserve. Bernie had to sneak the unemployment provision in last minute and grandstand Graham into submission to get even that much for average people. Be mad that 90% of the people in Congress don't give a damn about anything other than lining their donors' pockets with endless bail-outs.

Im_an_AssHunter posted...

Its their usual unemployment rate plus an additional $600, averaging what would be a salary of over $45k.

Pretty fucking insane, big mistake making it that much lol

It's almost as if someone was trying to buy votes.
For the record, I have worked through all this, and I don't make anywhere near $600.
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I'm self-employed and don't have a steady work schedule, so this would've been about what I'd make over the fall or winter. Spring and early summer is when I get not only most of my work, but the highest paying jobs, and I'm not even making half of what I normally would now that I'm sitting around. I'm fortunately a single, paranoid tightwad, so I was prepared for this and everything's fine so far. I'll have to re-think some shit around fall, though, and this is assuming I don't have any unexpected expenses or health disasters since I'm uninsured.

ElatedVenusaur posted...

It's pretty gross people are mad that the unemployed may actually have enough money to live on(until the extra amount expires July 31st and they're back to being f***ed).
Be mad you're not being paid what you deserve. Bernie had to sneak the unemployment provision in last minute and grandstand Graham into submission to get even that much for average people. Be mad that 90% of the people in Congress don't give a damn about anything other than lining their donors' pockets with endless bail-outs.

This. The only sinister thing going on is that America is operating as intended.


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ElatedVenusaur posted...

It's pretty gross people are mad that the unemployed may actually have enough money to live on

Calm down there. No one is coming for your gold. And you moved the goal post. The whole conversation is about people getting much more than what they need to live on and keep up. Lol, this dude said we're gross for questioning this weird payout. This is exactly why something sinister could easily happen behind it. Enough people are getting it, people would slap away any theorizing, because why would you want people looking into it >_>.

Or I'm just stir crazy. I'm kind of just bored and impatient for things to actually unfold

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SiO4 posted...

It's almost as if someone was trying to buy votes.
For the record, I have worked through all this, and I don't make anywhere near $600.

Well there better an extension or something by next month or the extra cash period is up.

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Sounds like the issue is people don't get paid enough when they work.

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Im_an_AssHunter posted...

Well there better an extension or something by next month or the extra cash period is up.

As this starts to hit the other states, you can bet there will be an extension.
This is Ben Bernanke's Helicopter 2.0..for votes.
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hockeybub89 posted...

Sounds like the issue is people don't get paid enough when they work.

Im not mad at that. I don't see any of it from either side. I got no dog in this fight and would love to see everyone thrive. But I'd also question everything about it along the way lol.

You can't say it's not weird that this happened behind the scenes while the Stimulus Check was a huge topic.

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bumpis

I'm getting almost twice what I was making a month. While it has helped tremendously, I know we're going to be paying a good amount of it back. I've been using it to pay off loans and debts on top of monthly bills. By the time I get back to work my monthly expenses should be down at least $300.

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GregShmedley posted...

Um...what? If anything, people are finally getting enough to live on.

You're right. I'm just use to living under the usually means and I got comfortable with it. I'm like a modern day hippy and shit. Doesn't mean everyone else wants too. But there is still little care as to why this is happening. That's the conversation I was trying to have. It's not gonna get taken away by questioning it on CE, ya know. It's all good though. Hope people are getting shit done that they've needed for years. I like when people thrive

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KStateKing17 posted...

I know we're going to be paying a good amount of it back.

What are you basing this on? I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious. I've never collected unemployment prior to this and I've read so much conflicting information about it. I'm a generally frugal person, so I'm keeping back 50% of my unemployment payments but I'm starting to get paranoid about spending any of it at all and not being able to pay it back. I've had several nightmarish experiences with owing the IRS money and I'd rather not repeat that. I am having the taxes withheld, fwiw.

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Pseudomenon posted...

What are you basing this on? I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious. I've never collected unemployment prior to this and I've read so much conflicting information about it. I'm a generally frugal person, so I'm keeping back 50% of my unemployment payments but I'm starting to get paranoid about spending any of it at all and not being able to pay it back. I've had several nightmarish experiences with owing the IRS money and I'd rather not repeat that. I am having the taxes withheld, fwiw.

Admittedly it is an assumption. There isn't a such thing as free money, especially with the government. I just can't imagine getting a tax return next year after collecting for 2 and a half months.

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don't worry, it's finite

it's nice now but won't mean much in a few months

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hockeybub89 posted...

Sounds like the issue is people don't get paid enough when they work.

That's because you don't have the tiniest inkling of what the word "enough" means.

Yeah I was working all along but my wife was off a couple months, she gets commission so her pay isn't 100% always the same but take home was probably rarely over $350 a week... so yeah, $600 on top of whatever couple hundred from unemployment was pretty great while it lasted. Kind of wish they had waited to call her back to work. >_>


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Bullet_Wing posted...

Minimum wage isn't enough to live on in most places and those are the main jobs hiring. Even reasonably skilled people are being passed over for entry level obs in favor of more experienced people.

Employers can pick the cream of the crop right now, and even people with formerly in high demand skills are hurting.

So the jobs that were meant for teenagers and older people become the only option to have an income, but now these people have student loans and other debts to pay that minimum wage won't cover.

All this through no fault of their own.

Unemployment right now is so far beyond minimum wage that it shouldn't even be part of the discussion.

Annihilated posted...

Unemployment right now is so far beyond minimum wage that it shouldn't even be part of the discussion.

On the contrary. What if the issue isn't that unemployment insurance is too high, but wages are too low?

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The23rdMagus posted...

On the contrary. What if the issue isn't that unemployment insurance is too high, but wages are too low?

Because you can still make a pretty good living on half that much.

Bullet_Wing posted...

But it's ending next month, so what do you propose happens then? For the sake of argument, let's say that COVID cases continue to spike, driven by early reopenings and protests. Say that the lifeline people have is stripped away from them next month with no hope of gainful employment.

What do we do then?

What it should have been in the first place was something to scale with income. Actually I thought that was the point of the "paycheck protection program" for companies to continue paying their furloughed employees, but turns out they had to file for state benefits to get paid. Then instead of getting something like 80% of their original salary, they get twice as much as their coworkers who are still working and exposing themselves to the virus. It's a fair compromise and is perfectly livable for most people.

Bullet_Wing posted...

This was proposed and got voted down because it would cost more to figure that number for each person out (thanks largely to a lot of state's unemployment platforms running on the incredibly archaic COBOL language). So 600 was floated as a compromise.

I agree it would make sense, but it's not feasible with the current structure.

I know there's no easy answer right now, but the $600 figure was TOO simple. It was chosen with basically fourth grade math saying that "well the median income earner needs this much so we'll just add that number." Except median does not mean everybody. Very poor choice by the democrats. The republicans are getting it wrong too with their idea of a "back to work" bonus. I know that we should not incentivize non-work in a normal economy, but this is an ongoing public health crisis, and the economy is not going to be firing on all cylinders for at least another year. This is the wrong time to be rewarding people for returning to work, just like it's wrong to be overpaying them relative to their colleagues. Maybe a good and still simple compromise would be to match the state benefits. UBI would also make sense right now except it would be insanely more expensive and government revenue is not set up to ever possibly fund this, assuming it can ever be funded at all.

Bullet_Wing posted...

This would be a good idea, but with some kind of total cap. My state's maximum is 823.

Yeah that's the problem with this approach is that some of the state benefits make no sense. Wyoming potentially pays more than California does, even though Wyoming is one of the two states in the country with zero minimum wage and California has some of the highest cost of living and median income in the country.

It surprises me but its not like they can't use it. It can be used to buy things now, pay bills or save a bit of extra in case their job doesn't come back, which it may not since the closures have taken out hundreds of thousands of businesses.

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Yep, and some businesses were brutally criticized for not firing or laying off their staff because they made more on unemployment

Not surprised at all considering most employers dont pay living insurance wages in the first place. I made more on the few weeks I was unemployed, but it was too depressing to handle it long term, so I found a new job.

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