A column in the Daily Telegraph makes a number of eye-catching claims about the state of education in the UK, but not all of them are right.
In the piece, journalist Celia Walden argues that schemes to help pupils catch up on their learning after the pandemic should focus on the core education of literacy and numeracy. She writes: “Do we really need reminding that […] we have the lowest literacy rates in our history.”
This isn’t true. We’ve asked the Telegraph what Ms Walden was referring to but it has not responded.
Our World in Data, a statistical publication from the University of Oxford, has collated figures going back to 1475, showing literacy in the late 15th century was around 5% – meaning only 5% of the population could read and write.
It is currently around 99%, although a significant number have low levels of literacy.
Assuming that Ms Walden was referring to the more recent past, it also appears as if this has improved slightly over the past few decades, based on the little consistent data available.
The average adult literacy scores improved between 1996 and 2012. And England’s score in international tests among children shows reading aptitude has remained similar or even increased since 2006.
The Telegraph article goes on to claim: “Our child literacy and numeracy rates consistently languish either at or near the bottom of every international table.”
We have asked the Telegraph for the source of this claim.
It possibly refers to a 2012 analysis by the OECD which found that England had the highest proportion of teenagers aged 16-19 with low levels of literacy and numeracy among 23 countries and territories.
However, it would be wrong to say that the UK’s child literacy and numeracy rates are at or near the bottom of every international table. More recent data, albeit covering children of different ages, paints a more positive picture.
In 2016, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) tested 10-year-olds across 50 countries and territories. Northern Ireland placed seventh and England placed joint-eighth, while Scotland and Wales did not participate.
In 2018, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tested 15-year-olds across around 80 countries and territories and the UK was above average for both reading and mathematics.
And in 2019, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tested pupils in year 5 and year 9 with much the same outcome. Students from the UK (specifically England and Northern Ireland, as Scotland and Wales didn’t participate), outperformed the average.
These studies all measure, in their own ways, average aptitude in maths and reading, rather than the proportion of children who meet a definition of “illiterate” or “innumerate”.
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“We’re seeing deaths under an average of 10 a week now from Covid, bearing in mind we’re going to be losing a lot more than that to heart disease and cancer and the like – well hundreds, I mean, hundreds more people – to both of those every single day, and that for some reason doesn’t make the headlines because only certain deaths count any more.”
talkRADIO presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer claimed on Friday that fewer than 10 people a week are now dying from Covid-19. This is untrue.
While the number of recent Covid-19 deaths remains relatively low, there are far more than 10 people dying each week from the virus in the UK.
When Ms Hartley-Brewer’s breakfast show aired on Friday morning, the most up-to-date available figures from the government (from Thursday 27 May) showed a seven-day rolling average of 8.6 Covid-19 deaths reported a day across the UK. In the week from 21 to 27 May, 57 people were reported dead within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.
The number of people reported dead within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test is most commonly used as it gives a more recent picture of deaths from the virus than the figures from death certificates, which are more reliable but take much longer to collect.
As we have written before, claims that this measure of the number of deaths could include some people who died for other reasons are true, however, it also does not include people who did die of Covid, but died more than 28 days after their first positive test.
Ms Hartley-Brewer also said “hundreds more people” are dying of cancer and heart disease each day than are dying from Covid-19.
According to an analysis of deaths in England, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), ischaemic heart diseases were the leading cause of death in April 2021 (the most recent month available), with 4,144 recorded. Split simply between the 30 days in April, this equates to around 138 deaths from ischaemic heart diseases each day.
The ONS’ monthly data only ranks the top ten leading causes of death, and identifies each type of cancer individually, so not all are represented. However, the three types of cancer highlighted add up to 4,046 deaths. Again, divided by the 30 days in April, equates to almost 135 deaths per day.
In April 2021, the ONS figures show, there were 941 deaths caused by Covid-19, the ninth most common cause of death in England. Covid-19 remains the leading cause of death in 2021 as a whole so far.
According to the British Heart Foundation, an average of 450 people die from heart and circulatory diseases in the UK each day. Cancer Research UK gives a similar figure, stating that there are “more than 166,000” deaths from cancer each year in the UK equating to an average of 450 a day, though these numbers only cover the period from 2016-2018.
Full Fact contacted talkRADIO for comment, but did not receive a response.
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An audit of ballots and a forensic audit of voting equipment earlier this year found no problems in the 2020 elections in Maricopa County, Arizona. But debunked claims about voter fraud revealed by secret “watermarks” are flowing again on social media amid a Republican-led audit. County officials say no watermarks were used on the ballots.
Full Story
According to the Maricopa County Elections Department, nearly 2.1 million voters participated in the 2020 general elections in Maricopa County,the largest countyin Arizona. President Joe Bidenwon the county by a margin of more than 45,000 votes over former President Donald Trump. Biden carried the state of Arizona by a closer margin of 10,457 votes.
The county takes steps before and after every election to ensure security and accuracy, including a hand-count audit of a “statistically significant sample of ballots” to be compared to the machine count. In 2020 that audit found 100% accuracy,according to county election officials.
Following claims of voter fraud from Republicans, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors also hired two independentvoting system testing laboratories to conduct aforensic auditof the county’s election equipment. The two firms, Pro V&V and SLI Compliance, reported in February that the election equipment and software passed all tests conducted during the forensic audit.
Yet baseless claims of voter fraud continued, and the Republican-led Arizona Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a private, Florida-based cybersecurity company, to conduct another audit of the Maricopa County ballots.
Despite objections of the Arizona Democratic Party, the state Senate ispayingCyber Ninjas — a company with no reported prior election audit experience — $150,000 to conduct the audit. Christina Bobb, a host on the conservative network One America News, helped raiseanother $150,000to help cover the costs. Cyber Ninjas Chief Executive Officer Doug Logan “is a proud supporter of the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement and has retweeted numerous posts on Twitter claiming that the 2020 General Election was rigged against Donald Trump,” according to a suit filed by the state Democratic Party to stop the partisan audit.
A state court in February ruledthat the county must turn over all election equipment and materials for the audit. Maricopa Countyturned overnearly 2.1 million ballots, 385 Election Day tabulators, nine central count tabulators, and more than eight terabytes of data — including tabulator logs, voter records, clones of servers and images of early ballot affidavits and ballot images — to the Arizona Senate, which then gave the materials to Cyber Ninjas.
The audit by Cyber Ninjas -– which began April 23 and is expected to take several weeks — has included the use of ultraviolet lights to see if watermarks were embedded in the ballots. Conspiracy theories surrounding watermarks on election ballots have been gaining traction since the 2020 presidential election, with QAnon followers falsely claiming official ballots were secretly watermarked by the Trump administration to ferret out the use of fraudulent ballots.
In November, we debunked false claims on social media that the Department of Homeland Security used watermarks on “official ballots” throughout the U.S.
Social media users have revived the bogus claim, however. AFacebook poston April 25 falsely claims, “So it’s official, there was in fact watermarks on the ballots in Arizona.”
A similar Instagrampostshows a screenshot of a tweet posted by @Dino_Veletanlic reading: “Donald Trump told us the 2020 election would be stolen via fake printed ballots. The media and left labeled us as conspiracy theorists. The Maricopa County audit is confirming the rumors, that a special watermark is on the real ballots.”
But those claims are false.
“Maricopa County election officials have stated that there are no watermarks on their ballots,” Sophia Solis, spokeswoman for the Arizona Secretary of State, told us in an email. “Misinformation and disinformation continue to be a serious threat to our democracy.”
On April 26, the Maricopa County Elections Departmenttweeted, “A question we’ve been getting a lot today is about@MaricopaCountyballots. Did you know there are NO watermarks on@MaricopaCountyballots? Get more facts like this in our@MaricopaVote“Just the Facts” updates:http://bit.ly/JustTheFacts4-26-21.”
The “Just the Facts” web page states, “There are many security measures in place when creating and printing ballots, but there are no secret markings on the ballot.”
The use of ultraviolet lights during the current audit raised concerns for election experts at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. It wrote a letter on April 29 to Chris Herren, chief of the voting section in the civil rights division at the Department of Justice, requesting that he deploy federal monitors to the location of the Arizona audit.
Apublic statementfrom the Brennan Center said that Cyber Ninjas’ audit process risks “compromising the integrity of the ballots themselves, using materials and technologies that will cause the ballot paper and marks to deteriorate, such as holding ballots to ultra-violet light without gloves.”
Ken Bennett, the state Senate Republicans’ liaison for the audit,told PolitiFacton May 3 that the auditors did initially scan ballots with UV lights to see if there were watermarks, but they are no longer using the lights. Bennett also stated there was “no evidence” of watermark findings and “findings would not be released in the middle of the audit anyway, that is pure speculation or made up whatever.”
Biden’s victory in Arizona was certified by state officials — including Republican Gov. Doug Ducey — in November and Congress accepted those results on Jan. 6.
Solis, the spokeswoman for the secretary of state, also said, “The election results have been certified and nothing that Cyber Ninjas does will alter the outcome.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
Sources
Arizona 2020 Election Results. Accessed 7 May 2021.
Arizona 2020 General Maricopa Hand Count Audit Report. Accessed 11 May 2021.
Arizona Counties by Population. Accessed 6 May 2021.
Arizona Secretary of State. 2020 General State Canvass. Accessed 11 May 2021.
Arizona Superior Court Maricopa County. “Arizona Democratic Party And Steve Gallardo V Karen Frann, Et Al.” 22 Apr 2021.
Arizona Superior Court Maricopa County. “Maricopa County, Et Al. V. Karen Fann, Et Al.” 25 Feb 2021.
Arizona Vote Audit Live Stream. Accessed 6 May 2021.
“Auditing Elections Equipment In Maricopa County.” Accessed 6 May 2021.
Bobb, Christina. (@Christina_Bobb). “Voices & Votes is excited for our second pledge to the AZ audit! We’re raising funds to help cover costs of the paper ballot analysis of the Arizona Election Audit. We’ve already met our first goal of $150,000. Let’s get this audit funded!https://voicesandvotes.org/donate/” Twitter. 15 Apr 2021.
Carroll, Logan. “Minnesota right reacts to Trump’s narrowing path: From wild conspiracy theories, to fear and sadness.” Minnesota Reformer. 6 Nov 2020.
“Cyber Ninja” webpage. Crunchbase.com. Accessed 11 May 2021.
Cyber Ninjas website. Accessed 11 May 2021.
“Cyber Ninjas releases documents describing Maricopa County audit procedures after court ruling.” ABC 15. 29 Apr 2021.
Duda, Jeremy and Jim Small. “Arizona Senate hires a ‘Stop the Steal’ advocate to lead 2020 election audit.” AZ Mirror. 1 Apr 2021.
Fifield, Jen. “Arizona election auditors are running ballots under UV light. What could they be looking for?” Arizona Republic. 29 Apr 2021.
Fifield, Jen. “Arizona Senate audit gets off to shaky start, with rules finalized on the fly.” Arizona Republic. 23 Apr 2021.
Fifield, Jen. “Judge rules Maricopa County must provide 2020 ballots to Arizona Senate for audit under subpoenas.” Arizona Republic. 26 Feb 2021.
Fifield, Jen. “Updated: Answers to your questions about the Arizona Senate’s audit of 2020 election results in Maricopa County.” Arizona Republic. 26 Apr 2021.
Just the Facts – Maricopa County Election Updates. Accessed 6 May 2021.
Kertscher, Tom and Amy Sherman. “No Proof for pro-Trump conspiracy theory of secret watermarks on Ariz. ballots.” PolitiFact. 3 May 2021.
Little, Olivia. “A QAnon election conspiracy theory about ballot fraud is going viral on TikTok.” Media Matters. 5 Nov 2020.
Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote). “A question we’ve been getting a lot today is about @MaricopaCounty ballots. Did you know there are NO watermarks on @MaricopaCounty ballots? Get more facts like this in our @MaricopaVote “Just the Facts” updates: http://bit.ly/JustTheFacts4-26-21.” Twitter. 26 Apr 2021.
Maricopa County Government. “2020 Election Security & Accuracy.” 26 Jan 2021.
Maricopa County Government. “Auditing Elections Equipment in Maricopa County.” 23 Feb 2021.
Oxford, Andrew. “Democrats settle lawsuit with Arizona Senate, Cyber Ninjas on Maricopa County election audit.” Arizona Republic. 5 May 2021.
Oxford, Andrew. “Cyber Ninjas, hired by Arizona Senate to recount Maricopa County’s ballots, asks court to keep its procedures secret.” USA Today. 26 Apr 2021.
Putterman, Samantha. “Did President Trump issue secret watermarks on ballots? No, that’s another QAnon conspiracy theory.” PolitiFact. 6 Nov 2020.
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We’ve seen widely shared posts on social media claiming that the Covid-19 vaccines are less effective than people believe, based on a series of figures from an article in the Lancet.
An Instagram post shares a screenshot that quotes these figures and claims that the vaccines “reduce your chance of catching COVID-19 by: Pfizer 0.8%, Johnson & J 1.2%, Moderna 1.2%, AstraZeneca 1.3%. So basically NO prevention”.
This is false.
Another post on Twitter claims they show that the vaccines’ efficacy is “not as 95% stated by the vaccine companies”.
This is false too.
The Lancet article is a comment piece, not peer-reviewed research, as the posts also falsely claim. The figures quoted in the screenshot show the absolute reduction of people’s risk in percentage points, not percent.
In other words they describe how much of the already low risk of getting ill with Covid the vaccines took away for participants in the trials. They do not refute any of the existing evidence on how well the vaccines work.
What does the article say?
The article argues that “fully understanding the efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines is less straightforward than it might seem”.
It compares the conventional method of measuring the effectiveness of a vaccine, which is by “relative risk reduction”, with another measurement called “absolute risk reduction”.
Relative risk reduction describes how much someone’s risk of something—in this case, getting ill with Covid—is reduced by the vaccine.
So if 10 unvaccinated people in a group of 100 get ill with Covid, but only one vaccinated person gets ill in a similar group of 100, then we can say that vaccinated group have had their risk reduced from 10% to 1%, which is a reduction in their risk of 90%.
Absolute risk reduction would describe the same situation differently. If 10 out of 100 unvaccinated people get ill with Covid, then the risk of catching it in the group was 10%. In the vaccinated group, the risk was lower, at one out of 100, or 1%. This means that vaccination reduced the absolute risk of getting ill with Covid by nine percentage points. That is the absolute risk reduction.
The two measures therefore describe different things. The reduction in someone’s absolute risk depends on how much risk they were facing in the first place, whereas a relative risk reduction applies no matter how much risk you might be facing.
The Lancet article argues that absolute risk reduction figures should be included alongside relative reduction figures when vaccine studies are reported.
It reports the relative risk reductions from trials of the five Covid vaccines: “95% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 90% for the Gamaleya, 67% for the J&J, and 67% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford”.
It also includes what it says are the absolute risk reductions from the trials of five Covid vaccines: “1.3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1.2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1.2% for the J&J, 0.93% for the Gamaleya, and 0.84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.”
These are the lower numbers that were quoted in the social media posts, which use them to falsely suggest that the vaccines offer less protection than people think.
In fact, these numbers show that the people who were not vaccinated in these trials had a low risk of getting ill with Covid, but the vaccines still took away most of that risk for the people who received them.
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Despite a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 6.1% in April — representing 9.8 million people who say they are actively looking for work — many employers are reporting that they can’t find people to hire.
Republicans say the $300 a week supplement to unemployment insurance, which for many Americans amounts to a pay raise, is so generous that it is acting as a disincentive for people to return to work.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, dismisses that suggestion, saying on May 10, “we don’t see much evidence of that.”
Photo by YinYang via Getty Images.
“Americans want to work,” Biden said. “I think the people who claim Americans won’t work even if they find a good and fair opportunity underestimate the American people.”
After the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a disappointing gain of 266,000 jobs in April, a reporter asked Biden if the enhanced unemployment benefits were “diminishing a return to work in some categories.”
“No, nothing measurable,” Biden said on May 7.
Biden and others in his administration argue there are other bigger drivers of labor shortages — such as access to child care (made worse by remote schooling) and the fact that most people still were not vaccinated against COVID-19 when the April jobs surveys were performed.
Republicans say Biden is ignoring the obvious.
At a recent county tour stop in Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst said she “heard from a number of small business owners that were very concerned about getting people back to work. They cannot find the help that they need.”
“So the president continues to say, ‘It’s not the enhanced unemployment benefits keeping people home,’ well, yes, folks, it is,” Ernst said on May 25. “And so, it is time to end the $300 extra each week that those unemployment recipients are receiving. If we can end that we can get people back to work.”
To date, at least 23 mostly Republican-led states have decided to prematurely cut off the extra UI payments this summer, most in June, three months before they are set to expire.
So who’s right? Is a too-generous UI supplement the major reason workers are not rejoining the workforce? Economists disagree on the answer.
Economists Divided
The CARES Act passed early in the pandemic in March 2020 provided a $600 per week federal unemployment insurance supplement, in addition to normal state unemployment benefits. That expired in late July. In December, Congress passed another relief bill that included a $300 unemployment insurance benefit until mid-March.
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan championed by Biden extended the $300 supplement from mid-March through Labor Day. (An alternative Republican plan would have extended those extra UI payments only through the end of June.)
At the beginning of May, there were about 16 million Americans collecting unemployment insurance payments.
There have been many anecdotal stories in the media about employers saying they’re having a hard time filling job vacancies, particularly in the restaurant industry, because of the enhanced unemployment benefit. But economists are divided on the issue.
In a recent survey conducted by the University of Chicago’s Initiative on Global Markets, 40 prominent economists were asked whether they agree with this statement: “The $300 supplement to weekly unemployment benefits available from now through September 6 constitutes a major disincentive to work for lower-wage workers.” Nearly half (49%) said it was “uncertain,” while 28% said they agree or strongly agree, and 16% said they disagree.
Here is a sampling of the responses:
“$300 of extra money per week is quite meaningful to a low wage worker. Certainly enough to affect decisions.” — Aaron Edlin, co-director of the Law and Economics Program at Berkeley Law.
“‘Major’ is probably too strong, but with COVID improving and labor demand rebounding, UI benefit levels matter more now than before.” — Joseph Altonji, economics professor at Yale.
“I go for ‘minor disincentive.’ More important are childcare responsibilities, fear of COVID in jobs with close personal contact.” — Barry Eichengreen, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“I don’t think we know enough about it. Fears of getting Covid may be a more important factor.” — Oliver Hart, an economics professor at Harvard.
“There will be some adverse effect on employment, just not clear how much.” — Pete Klenow, an economics professor at Stanford.
“Anecdotal cases of benefit recipients declining work will abound, but the evidence is that the effect is not major.” — Larry Samuelson, an economics professor at Yale.
“Clearly a disincentive, but major? Compared with the effect of schools being closed?” — Richard Schmalensee, an emeritus professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“‘Major’ is probably too strong, but it does permit some workers to search more/longer for better jobs.” — Christopher Udry, an economics professor at Northwestern.
Earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said there had been “report after report indicating” it was “not accurate” that the benefits discouraged work, according to Politico. Wyden instead blamed factors such as a lack of child care and reduced public transit services for the labor supply shortage.
When we inquired about Wyden’s statement, his press office pointed, in part, to a July 14, 2020, Yale study of the initial $600 benefit (back when the unemployment rate was in double digits) that found “no evidence that more generous benefits disincentivized work either at the onset of the expansion or as firms looked to return to business over time.”
Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco about the initial $600 bonus similarly concluded, “Evidence from recent labor market outcomes confirms that the supplemental payments had little or no adverse effect on job search.”
A study led by Ioana Marinescu, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, found that the increase in benefits from April to June 2020 did not reduce employment, even though it did reduce the number of job applications a bit. At the time, jobs were unusually scarce.
Scarcity of Research on $300 Bonus
But things are different now.
“Now, there is an increase in the number of job postings, so it is possible that the reduction in applications caused by unemployment insurance contributes to reducing job finding,” Marinescu told us via email. “Because of higher unemployment benefits, employers may be getting fewer applications for each job than before the pandemic. However, no one has quantified this (for the current round of benefits), and we cannot tell how big the influence of unemployment insurance is on job finding relative to other factors such as concerns about health or lack of childcare. In this sense, Biden is correct to say ‘nothing measurable.’”
Indeed, according to Opportunity Insights’ TrackTheRecovery.org, job postings in the U.S. have increased 5.5% compared with January 2020, before the pandemic.
Despite an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high, the 8.1 million job openings at the end of March outpaced hires by 2.1 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That gap between job openings and hires is the largest since the data became available in 2000. Pre-pandemic, in January 2020, job openings outpaced hires by nearly 1.2 million, so there was a gap then too, but not as large.
Calling for an end to the enhanced unemployment benefit, Republican Sen. Rob Portman said that “with vaccines widely available and a record number of job openings, there is no reason the federal government should be paying people not to work.”
University of Chicago economist Peter Ganong told the Wall Street Journal that the $300 UI supplement means that “42% of workers are making more than their pre-unemployment wage.”
Still, Ganong told PolitiFact.com, “There’s just not enough evidence to understand what’s going on right now.”
“While there is a good theoretical reason to think the UI enhancement might create a disincentive — it increases the value of being on UI a bit — the question is how big a factor this really is given all the other factors facing families,” Aaron Sojourner, an expert in labor economics at the University of Minnesota, told us. “We have good evidence that the UI supplement had little effect on job search in the heart of the pandemic and before vaccinations were available. It likely has more effect now but we just don’t have much evidence about the benefits in terms of encouraging work.”
Although there has been little research so far on the effect of the recent $300 bonus, economist Arindrajit Dube at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst extended a previous study of the UI supplements into March. He concluded, preliminarily, that the bonus wasn’t having much of an effect on labor shortages.
“Maybe an unemployed person spends several additional days unemployed because of the $300,” Dube told the New York Times. “But if it’s a problem, it takes care of itself. It’s nothing compared to the broader trajectory of the reopening, which swamps anything on the unemployment insurance front.”
“Demand and supply for labor are both rising quickly,” Sojourner told us. “There are more employers hiring, the virus is more contained, and excellent vaccines are becoming available, but only about 2 in 5 working-age Americans are now at least 2 weeks past their final vaccine dose. It’s just not clear how many unemployed folks are close enough to working that $300 will be a decisive factor.”
But as we said earlier, not all economists agree.
University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan estimates that the $300 UI bonus is reducing employment by a couple million jobs.
“On top of the bonus is free health insurance that Biden has also awarded the unemployed,” Mulligan told us via email.
Other Factors Influencing Labor Shortages
The White House, meanwhile, argues too much is being made of the idea that workers are choosing to stay home primarily because the UI bonus is too generous.
“There are many factors that go into whether a person is taking a job. Right?” Cecilia Rouse, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said at a press briefing on May 14. “If they — if somebody is not fully vaccinated, if there’s still a lot of COVID in their area, if they have still child care constraints, there are many factors that this pandemic has caused that are going to play into people’s decision — ability to go back to work.”
Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard, who was appointed to the Fed board in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, also cited lingering school closures and fear of exposure to the coronavirus as major hurdles to many people returning to work. While deaths are down dramatically as more Americans get vaccinated, COVID-19 was still causing nearly 2,000 deaths per week in early May.
“People do actually want to go back to work; they are willing to do that,” Brainard said on May 11.
Nonetheless, while Biden said he did not think the UI bonus was a “major factor” in people not returning to work, he emphasized: “We’re going to make it clear that anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits. There are a few COVID-19-related exceptions so that people aren’t forced to choose between their basic safety and a paycheck, but, otherwise, that’s the law.”
An Economic Boost?
Biden and other White House officials say the UI supplement has not only helped struggling families, but has aided the economy as well.
“UI has served a very important role through this pandemic,” Rouse said. “It has allowed people to pay the rent, which we know is very important for the landlord; it’s allowed people to put food on the table, which is important for them and their families. And so, we stand behind that those are very important supports. They’re supports to help us bridge to the end of this pandemic.”
Sojourner, of the University of Minnesota, echoed those sentiments, saying “the harms of cutting the supplement are clear.”
“In the latest data, from March, there were about 8 million job openings, likely more now,” Sojourner told us. “But there are now about 16 million Americans and their families using UI right now after losing their jobs through no fault of their own. That $300 has important benefits to many families and individuals every week, in terms of their ability to secure housing, food, and health. Eliminating it and putting people on regular UI means they’re going to have incomes about half of their pre-layoff earnings. Millions of people will still not find a job and now they’re risking eviction, loss of a vehicle, and lack of nutrition.”
Marinescu, of the University of Pennsylvania, said it’s “important to note that unemployment benefits also stimulate consumption, which creates jobs, and this effect can counteract the effect on job applications. By stimulating consumption, unemployment benefits contribute to increasing job creation and ultimately employment.”
“This consumption effect is likely to be stronger now than last year because the economy is reopening and people have more opportunities to consume and lower concerns about infection,” Marinescu told us. “In that sense, employers should remember that while higher benefits may make workers less enthusiastic about taking their jobs, higher benefits also give them more customers. Therefore, my educated guess is that higher unemployment benefits are still on net a positive contribution to the economy, especially when considering their insurance effect, i.e. the fact that they help out people whose income would otherwise be much lower.”
Other economists say the effect of the unemployment boost likely varies by state, as states pay varying amounts in basic unemployment insurance and, of course, the cost of living differs dramatically state to state.
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard told Reuters that such differences likely mean the UI bonus may act as a stronger disincentive in some states.
The same $300 “incentivizes people very differently,” Bullard said, adding that the $300 UI supplement “is a factor,” but “not the only factor” keeping people from returning to the workforce.
The talking points from both Democrats and Republicans are simple and clear: One side argues the UI bonus isn’t the main reason for a labor supply shortage, while the other argues it is. But the issue is more complicated than either side suggests, and economists disagree on the impact.
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President Biden: "Nearly 170 million Americans — of every party, every background, every walk of life — have stepped up, rolled up their sleeves and gotten the shot. 52% of adults are now full vaccinated."
