The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called on Congress Friday to terminate the additional $300 weekly unemployment benefits after Joe Biden’s poor April jobs report.
The Chamber’s Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley stated in a release:
The disappointing jobs report makes it clear that paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market. We need a comprehensive approach to dealing with our workforce issues and the very real threat unfilled positions poses to our economic recovery from the pandemic. One step policymakers should take now is ending the $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefit. Based on the Chamber’s analysis, the $300 benefit results in approximately one in four recipients taking home more in unemployment than they earned working.
Breitbart News’s John Carney reported that the April numbers could reflect less hiring by “enhanced unemployment benefits,” as numerous businesses say “they cannot hire enough workers to fill positions because of the government’s enhanced unemployment benefits program.”
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) echoed the Chamber’s concerns in a Thursday statement:
This labor shortage is being created in large part by the supplemental unemployment payments that the federal government provides claimants on top of their state unemployment benefits. What was intended to be a short-term financial assistance for the vulnerable and displaced during the height of the pandemic has turned into a dangerous federal entitlement, incentivizing and paying workers to stay at home rather than encouraging them to return to the workplace.
The reaction to the Chamber’s demand to end the extra weekly benefits of $300 varied on Twitter:
Carney also wrote, “the U.S. economy added just 266,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1 percent, the Labor Department said in its monthly labor assessment Friday, smashing expectations.”