Eric Morath
speaker
273 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2017
last heard Sep 2020
Eric Morath’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Some businesses, and I talked to an operator of a call center in Kentucky, said they're actually turning down work and not hiring as many people as they could because workers aren't willing to come work for them, even work from home for about $15 an hour because they're being paid more on unemployment benefits.
They see these benefits as a detriment to growth.
But other businesses, and I spoke to a beauty supply store in Alabama, and he said, hey, if these benefits are cut off, he fears that he's going to see a repeat of what he saw in March, which is a sharp fall in consumer spending and customers not coming to his stores.
So that's even kind of split the business lobbyists.
An interesting player here, the Mortgage Bankers Association, are lobbying to extend these benefits because they're concerned that people won't be able to keep up with their house and rent payments without them.
The kind of unusual way Congress went about increasing these benefits by just setting a flat $600 rate on top of state formulas, it's created this odd circumstance where about two-thirds of those receiving benefits are actually being paid more than they received at their jobs.
So that has many Republicans in Congress saying, you know, of course, why would anybody go back to work for less money than
And, you know, therefore, you know, at minimum, an adjustment needs to be made so far fewer people are, you know, essentially coming out ahead by not working.
Yeah, I think that's what will happen.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the Trump administration have signaled a willingness to continue the benefits to some degree, but maybe not at the $600 amount.
The $600 amount is pretty high.
It's roughly equivalent to making $23 an hour at a full-time job.
So I think there's some middle ground there, perhaps lowering that benefit amount from 600, perhaps phasing it out over time.
And then also some lawmakers, including Republicans, have advocated for like a bonus or you can keep the benefits for a month after you go back to your job.
So there's less of an incentive to refuse work if that's offered to you.
Yeah, I think so.
Particularly if you look where these benefits most impact people, you know, some states that could be in play, including Nevada and Georgia, are places where there's high shares of people who are receiving these benefits.
And if they're taken away, you know, that may influence how they vote.
In the last few weeks, we saw a growing number of small businesses saying either they were closed or they were giving their workers fewer hours.
And that's a concerning trend because it could suggest that as COVID cases have been again on the rise, businesses are reacting by either reclosing or seeing less demand and not needing as many workers to provide their services.
Showing 81–100 of 273 · page 5 of 14
← Previous
Next →