Increasing Employment by Halting Pandemic Unemployment Benefits

Iris Arbogast and Bill Dupor

Review, 2022, vol. 104, issue 3, 166-177

Abstract: In mid-2021, 26 states halted participation in all or some federal emergency unemployment benefits (EUB) programs before those programs' federal funding lapsed. This article uses this asynchronous EUB cessation between early- and late-halting states to estimate the causal impact of benefit cessation on employment. We find that cessation increased employment by 29 persons for every 100 (pre-halt) EUB recipients. Expressed as a number of jobs, if all states had halted EUB in June, September employment would have been 3.4 million persons higher relative to a no-halt counterfactual. Late-halting states could have significantly accelerated their states' jobs recoveries in the second half of 2021 through early program cessation.

Keywords: COVID-19; employment; unemployment benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedlrv:94389

DOI: 10.20955/r.104.166-77

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