The Finance 202: Business comes around on unemployment insurance as pandemic endures
Tory Newmyer
with Brent D. Griffiths
There's a surprising new consensus as lawmakers scramble to reach a deal on an emergency economic relief plan: A proposal to offer $300 per week in enhanced federal unemployment benefits is drawing broad bipartisan support. And it's backed by business groups and left-leaning economists alike.
“You don’t want people to think they have to rush back to work because unemployment insurance is not able to provide enough income,” Glenn Spencer, the executive vice president of employment policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells me. “Some of the jobs that people would be able to get back to in a normal recession aren’t going to be there. So it’s going to take workers longer to adjust to the economy that we’ve got.”