Voters in battleground districts believe generous unemployment benefits are hindering economic recovery and the labor market, according to a recent poll authorized by the American Action Network for House Republican leadership this week.
Fifty-nine percent of the respondents agreed with the statement that “massive new government spending programs that increased unemployment benefits are hurting the economic recovery. It is causing labor shortages because many workers are paid more to stay unemployed than they would if they returned to work.”
Of those results, 60 percent of independent voters agreed with the statement, and 54 percent of college-educated women felt the same way.
Looking further at the results, a majority (51 percent) of respondents said that the generous unemployment benefits had been an incentive for people to remain unemployed and stay on unemployment rather than find a job.
Those who felt this way agreed with the statement that “these extra payments provide too many workers with an incentive to remain unemployed since some workers can make as much or more on unemployment as they could while working.”
The middle-class was the largest group to agree with the statement, at 55 percent. The second-largest group was the non-college educated at 54 percent.
The American Action Network also identified key takeaways from the poll noting that “Conservatives have clear winning arguments over liberals on economic issues and concerns.”
The poll focusing on labor shortages shows that they are in part “due to the Democratic-pushed extended unemployment benefits. A continued push for tax increases to pay for far-left liberal programs should only further elevate our economic arguments.”
The American Action Network tasked Tarrance Group and American Viewpoint to conduct interviews of registered voters in 51 battleground Congressional districts between June 22 to 29. The survey asked 1,009 people with a margin of error plus or minus 3.1 percent, with a confidence level of 95 percent.