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    'I Quit My Job' Is a Signal of Economic Recovery

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    With new opportunities and a different perspective as the pandemic eases, workers are choosing to leave their jobs in record numbers.At some point early this year, Justin Hoffman concluded that he was being underpaid.The marketing director at an orthopedic practice in Findlay, Ohio, Mr. Hoffman was making $42,000 a year — about $13,000 less, by his count, than people were making in similar jobs elsewhere.But when he asked for a raise in March, he was given only a small bump in pay. “That was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.So after some careful thinking, Mr. Hoffman, 28, did what he had long ached to do: He quit. His last day was June 4.Mr. Hoffman is among millions of workers who have voluntarily left their jobs recently, one of the most striking elements of the newly blazing-hot job market. According to the Labor Department, nearly four million people quit their jobs in April, the most on record, pushing the rate to 2.7 percent of those employed.The rate was particularly high in the leisure and hospitality industry, where competition for workers has been especially fierce. But the number of those quitting registered across the board.Economists believe that one reason more workers are quitting is simply a backlog: By some estimates, more than five million fewer people quit last year than would otherwise be expected, as some workers, riding out the labor market’s convulsions, stuck with jobs they may have wanted to leave anyway. (And the millions of involuntary job losses during the pandemic surely accounted for some of the reduction in quitting.) Now that the economy is regaining its footing, workers may suddenly be feeling more emboldened to heed their impulses.But another factor may be the speed with which the economy has reawakened. As the pandemic has receded and the great reopening has swept across the country, businesses that had gone into hibernation or curtailed their work force during the pandemic have raced to hire employees to meet the surging demand.At the same time, many people remain reluctant to return to work because of lingering fears of the virus, child care or elder care challenges, still-generous unemployment benefits, low wages or other reasons.The result has been an explosion of job openings, despite a relatively high unemployment rate, as businesses struggle to recruit and retain employees — a dynamic that has placed power more firmly in workers’ hands. With employers offering higher wages to attract candidates, many workers — especially in low-wage positions in restaurants and hotels — are leaving their jobs and jumping to ones that pay even slightly more.“There’s a lot of churn in low-wage jobs where people don’t really have a career progression,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “If you find a job that offers just marginally more, there’s no cost to you in switching.”More than 740,000 workers quit jobs in leisure and hospitality in April, the Labor Department said, for a rate of 5.3 percent. A vast majority were in accommodation and food service.The pandemic has driven workers to quit for other reasons as well. With fewer opportunities for spending, some people were able to save money and pay down their debts, giving them a cushion to leave jobs with which they were dissatisfied. Other workers, disinclined to give up remote work, are abandoning jobs that are no longer affording them as much flexibility.For Mr. Hoffman, the decision to leave his job was the culmination of months of perceived injustices, which he said he was able to evaluate more clearly because of the pandemic.As coronavirus cases swelled in the fall, he asked to work from home because of the risk he feared he posed to his sister, whose immune system is compromised. His request was denied, he said, crystallizing his sense that he was not respected or valued.Over the last year, with the pandemic limiting his social interactions, he began to network over Twitter with other people in marketing. That was how he determined that he was being significantly underpaid.Mr. Hoffman, who is now looking for work, said he probably would have quit eventually. But the pandemic, he said, hastened his decision.“I think that if the pandemic hadn’t happened, then things wouldn’t have turned out this way,” he said. “It didn’t just change my perspective on my compensation, but I think it’s changed a lot about my understanding of the relationship between employers and employees.”A restaurant in Louisville, Ky., advertised it was hiring. More than 740,000 workers quit jobs in leisure and hospitality in April, the Labor Department said.Amira Karaoud/ReutersOn a more philosophical level, the constant threat of illness, more time with family members, leisure time that gave way to new passions — all may have prompted some workers to reassess how they want to spend their time. Burned out, some people have left their jobs for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like traveling the world. Others have seen an opportunity to shift careers or branch out on their own.Start-ups surged during the pandemic, particularly in Black communities, as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits helped seed entrepreneurs’ dreams and bolster their confidence.“The pandemic, for a lot of people, was really stressful and caused a lot of uncertainty, so I think what a lot of people did was reflect on their lives,” said Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University who studies employee resignations.Dr. Klotz said people were accustomed to work being at the center of their lives and identities — a reality that may have shifted during the pandemic.“In general, we want a life of contentment and a life that has purpose,” he said. “And I think for many people, they’ve discovered that contentment and purpose for them may lie outside of work.”That was the case for Matt Gisin, 24, who gave notice at his job as a graphic designer at a health and wellness company this month. During the pandemic, he was able to work remotely, and without a commute, he had more time for hobbies like CrossFit and video game streaming.“I got very adjusted to all of this time and all of this freedom,” he said.But slowly, his company began requiring employees to come back into the office, first for two days a week, then three, then four. With so many people commuting to work in their cars, his trip from his home in Mamaroneck, N.Y., to the middle of Long Island could stretch to two hours each way, leaving him little time for his pastimes.“I wasn’t happy anymore,” he said. “I was finding happiness in a lot of outside activities so I took this kind of leap to leave.” He now hopes to find a job in the video game industry.Economists expect the elevated level of quitting to continue for some time, as the pandemic eases and the economy rebalances.“I would be surprised if this ended before the summer ended,” said Andrew Chamberlain, the chief economist for the hiring site Glassdoor. But he also said there was an “expiration date”: A high number of workers quitting will contribute to a labor shortage, eventually forcing employers to raise wages and provide other incentives, which will help lure workers back and re-establish economic equilibrium.In the meantime, he said, workers — especially those with low wages — will continue to gain leverage over employers.“The longer these shortages persist, the more bargaining power you put into the hands of very low-skilled workers,” he said. “There is some evidence that employers are moving in response, and that’s unusual.” More

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    State unemployment claims increased last week.

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    Initial claims for state jobless benefits rose last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.The weekly figure was about 402,000, up 37,000 from the previous week. New claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for jobless freelancers, gig workers and others who do not ordinarily qualify for state benefits, totaled 118,000, up 47,000 from the prior week. The figures are not seasonally adjusted. (On a seasonally adjusted basis, state claims totaled 412,000, an increase of 37,000.)In four states — Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi and Missouri — it was the final week in which some or all federal pandemic unemployment benefits were paid, including a $300 supplement to other benefits. A total of 25 Republican-led states have announced plans to discontinue federal benefits this month or next, even though they are funded through September.New state claims remain high by historical standards but are one-half the level recorded in early February. The benefit filings, something of a proxy for layoffs, have receded as businesses return to fuller operations, particularly in hard-hit industries like leisure and hospitality. More

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    State Unemployment Claims Fall Below 400,000

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    Initial claims for state jobless benefits declined last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.The weekly figure was about 367,000, a decrease of 58,000 from the previous week. New claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for jobless freelancers, gig workers and others who do not ordinarily qualify for state benefits, totaled 71,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the prior week. The figures are not seasonally adjusted. (On a seasonally adjusted basis, state claims totaled 376,000, a decline of 9,000.)It was the first time the weekly figure for initial state claims had fallen below 400,000 since the outset of the pandemic.New state claims remain high by historical standards but are one-third the level recorded in early January. The benefit filings, something of a proxy for layoffs, have receded as businesses return to fuller operations, particularly in hard-hit industries like leisure and hospitality. More

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    Employers Offer Incentives for Job Applicants

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    Employers are finding ways to get applicants in the door, and to retain employees once they’re hired.College subsidies for children and spouses. Free rooms for summer hotel employees and a set of knives for aspiring culinary workers. And appetizers on the house for anyone willing to sit down for a restaurant job interview.Determined to lure new employees and retain existing ones in a suddenly hot job market, employers are turning to new incentives that go beyond traditional monetary rewards. In some cases, the offerings include the potential to reshape career paths, like college scholarships and guaranteed admission to management training programs.Despite an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent in May, the sudden reopening of vast swaths of the economy has left companies scrambling for workers as summer approaches, especially in the service sector. What’s more, in many cases the inducements are on top of increases in hourly pay.The result is a cornucopia of new benefits as human resources officers and employees alike rethink what makes for a compelling compensation package. And in a pathbreaking move, some businesses are extending educational benefits to families of employees.The labor market was relatively tight before the pandemic stuck in early 2020, with an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent, but the rise of noncash offerings is a new wrinkle. Many large companies find themselves pitted against other giants in the search for workers with similar types of skills and experience and want to stand out, especially in the rush to staff back up after the pandemic.“We knew we had to do something radically different to make Waste Management attractive when you have other companies looking for the same type of worker,” said Tamla Oates-Forney, chief people officer at Waste Management. “There is such a war for talent that compensation isn’t a differentiator.”“You can never have too many drivers,” she said. “When you think about Amazon and Walmart, we’re going after the same population.”The company will pay for employees to earn bachelor’s and associate degrees, as well as certificates in areas like data analytics and business management. In a significant expansion, Waste Management will begin offering these scholarships to spouses and children of workers this year for enrollment in January.“We can do something that really changes people’s lives,” said Jim Fish, Waste Management’s chief executive. “For someone with kids in high school, this is a big deal.”JBS USA, the nation’s largest meatpacker, began offering to pay for college degrees for its 66,000 workers as well as one child per employee in March. The move followed an increase of more than 30 percent in hourly pay over the last year, said Chris Gaddis, head of human resources at JBS USA.At large beef processing plants, floor workers earn $21 an hour, with salaries rising to $30 an hour for employees with more advanced skills. “We’re seeing a lot more innovation both in terms of wages and secondary incentives, but nobody is doing what we’re doing in terms of rural America,” Mr. Gaddis said.The educational incentives at JBS and Waste Management are designed both to reduce turnover and to attract new employees. Each company fully pays tuition at a selected group of institutions; the JBS program offers a wider variety of majors and certificates. With dependents covered for schooling, careers can stretch from years to decades instead.Each time an hourly employee leaves Waste Management, it costs a minimum of $12,000 to search for and hire a replacement, Mr. Fish said. What’s more, among drivers, 50 percent of safety incidents involve those with three years or less on the job.“In terms of safety, the longer you are here, the better you are,” Mr. Fish said. And by paying for education, he added, “there is a real hook.” Waste Management estimates the cost will be $5 million to $10 million for the first year of the employee program.In the wake of the pandemic, employers are thinking more holistically about their employees and their goals, including personal and family life, said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. Extending the benefits to spouses and children seeks to address those considerations.“You can’t hide your family life,” Ms. Konkel said. “Everybody has had to wildly change what they’ve done the last 15 months.”As generous as the incentives may seem, they can be cheaper than across-the-board pay raises, said Daniel Zhao, a senior economist with the career site Glassdoor. Still, he said, “committing to a new benefit program is a pretty significant move and signals a longer-term commitment than coupons or one-time bonuses.”Nataly Mendoza Yanez joined JBS four and a half years ago as a production floor employee in Tolleson, Ariz., before moving to the human resources department. With help from the company, she is planning to study international business at nearby Glendale Community College in August.“It feels like the opportunity fell from the sky,” said Ms. Mendoza Yanez, who hopes to work for JBS’s unit in Australia one day. “I’m really excited about it. I was going to go back to school, but it’s pricey.”Nataly Mendoza Yanez, who works for JBS in Tolleson, Ariz., plans to use the company’s help to attend a community college.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesThe competition for new hires is especially intense in the leisure and hospitality industry, which has surged back to life after shutting down almost completely last spring.Applebee’s is seeking to hire 10,000 people this summer and announced last month that it would hand out vouchers for a free appetizer to anyone who scheduled an interview. Hoping for 10,000 applicants, the restaurant chain got 40,000 as a result of the offer, said John Cywinski, Applebee’s president.“Our No. 1-selling category is appetizers, so we decided to offer an app for an app,” Mr. Cywinski said. “I’ve got guests coming back in droves, but I don’t have all the team members I’d like.”To attract workers this summer, Omni Hotels & Resorts is offering a range of incentives, including free hotel rooms for summer employees at some properties, as well as guaranteed entrance into the company’s management training program for staff members who stay through Labor Day. New employees will also receive three free nights at the Omni hotel of their choice.“We have put aside guest rooms in our hotels so employees wouldn’t need to worry about where they would live so they could take this job,” said Joy Rothschild, Omni’s chief human resources officer. “We have never taken guest rooms out of inventory for housing before.”Members of the culinary team will get a free set of knives, and weekly sit-downs with the executive chef in the kitchen where they work so they can tap the chef’s expertise.“We needed to do something to grab the attention of culinary students,” Ms. Rothschild said. “I’ve seen a lot of people offering monetary incentives, but we didn’t feel that was enough. The college students coming want something more than the paycheck.”Not that cash has gone completely out of style — all of Omni’s summer hires get a $250 signing bonus plus a $500 retention bonus at the end of the season.Omni has also raised pay and created new tiers in some jobs based on experience. Entry-level housekeepers earn $16 an hour at the Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas, while those with more than two years’ experience now come in at $17 an hour.Chuck E. Cheese, the family entertainment center chain, is hiring 5,000 employees this summer and recently expanded its scholarship program. It is also offering employees $1,500 bonuses when they refer managers.Ms. Rothschild believes that the additional incentives are needed to fill the ranks. If anything, she added, new ones are on the way.“I don’t think we’re done with incentives,” she said. “We want to see how much traction we get with these, but I suspect we will be coming out with more.” More

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    Workers Are Gaining Leverage Over Employers Right Before Our Eyes

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    “Employers are becoming much more cognizant that yes, it’s about money, but also about quality of life.”The relationship between American businesses and their employees is undergoing a profound shift: For the first time in a generation, workers are gaining the upper hand.The change is broader than the pandemic-related signing bonuses at fast-food places. Up and down the wage scale, companies are becoming more willing to pay a little more, to train workers, to take chances on people without traditional qualifications, and to show greater flexibility in where and how people work.The erosion of employer power began during the low-unemployment years leading up to the pandemic and, given demographic trends, could persist for years.March had a record number of open positions, according to federal data that goes back to 2000, and workers were voluntarily leaving their jobs at a rate that matches its historical high. Burning Glass Technologies, a firm that analyzes millions of job listings a day, found that the share of postings that say “no experience necessary” is up two-thirds over 2019 levels, while the share of those promising a starting bonus has doubled.People are demanding more money to take a new job. The “reservation wage,” as economists call the minimum compensation workers would require, was 19 percent higher for those without a college degree in March than in November 2019, a jump of nearly $10,000 a year, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.Employers are feeling it: A survey of human resources executives from large companies conducted in April by the Conference Board, a research group, found that 49 percent of organizations with a mostly blue-collar work force found it hard to retain workers, up from 30 percent before the pandemic.“Companies are going to have to work harder to attract and retain talent,” said Karen Fichuk, who as chief executive of the giant staffing company Randstad North America closely tracks supply and demand for labor. “We think it’s a bit of a historic moment for the American labor force.”This recalibration between worker and employer partly reflects a strange moment in the economy. It’s reopening, but many would-be workers are not ready to return to the job.Yet in key respects, the shift builds on changes already underway in the tight labor market preceding the pandemic, when the unemployment rate was 4 percent or lower for two straight years.That follows decades in which union power declined, unemployment was frequently high and employers made an art out of shifting work toward contract and gig arrangements that favored their interests over those of their employees. It would take years of change to undo those cumulative effects.But the demographic picture is not becoming any more favorable for employers eager to fill positions. Population growth for Americans between ages 20 and 64 turned negative last year for the first time in the nation’s history. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the potential labor force will grow a mere 0.3 to 0.4 percent annually for the remainder of the 2020s; the size of the work force rose an average of 0.8 percent a year from 2000 to 2020.An important question for the overall economy is whether employers will be able to create conditions attractive enough to coax back in some of the millions of working-age adults not currently part of the labor force. Depending on your view of the causes, the end of expanded pandemic-era jobless benefits might have an effect too. Some businesses may need to raise prices or retool how they operate; others may be forced to close entirely.Higher wages are part of the story. The jobs report issued on Friday showed that average hourly earnings for nonmanagerial workers were 1.3 percent higher in May than two months earlier. Other than in a brief period of statistical distortions early in the pandemic, that is the strongest two-month gain since 1983.But wages alone aren’t enough, and firms seem to be finding it in their own best interest to seek out workers across all strata of society, to the benefit of people who have missed out on opportunity in the last few decades.“I’ve been doing this a long time and have never felt more excited and more optimistic about the level of creative investment on this issue,” said Bertina Ceccarelli, chief executive of NPower, a nonprofit aimed at helping military veterans and disadvantaged young adults start tech industry careers. “It’s an explosive moment right now.”In effect, an entire generation of managers that came of age in an era of abundant workers is being forced to learn how to operate amid labor scarcity. That means different things for different companies and workers — and often involves strategies more elaborate than simply paying a signing bonus or a higher hourly wage.At the high end of the labor market, that can mean workers are more emboldened to leave a job if employers are insufficiently flexible on issues like working from home.It also means companies thinking more expansively about who is qualified for a job in the first place. That is evident, for example, in the way Alex Lorick, a former South Florida nightclub bouncer, was able to become a mainframe technician at I.B.M.Mr. Lorick often worked a shift called “devil’s nine to five” — 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. — made all the more brutal when it was interspersed with day shifts. The hours were tough, but the pay was better than in his previous jobs, one at a retirement home and another serving food at a dog track. Yet it was a far cry from the type of work he had dreamed about in high school, when he liked computers and imagined making video games for a living.As a young adult, he took online classes in web development and programming languages, but encountered a Catch-22 many job seekers know well: Nobody wanted to hire a tech worker without experience, which meant he couldn’t get enough experience to be hired. College wasn’t for him. Hence the devil’s nine to five.Until late last year, that is. After months on unemployment during the pandemic, he heard from I.B.M., where he had once applied and been rejected for a tech job. It invited him to apply to an apprenticeship program that would pay him to be trained as a mainframe technician. Now 24, he completed his training this month and is beginning hands-on work in what he hopes is the start of a long career.“This is a way more stable paycheck, and more consistent hours,” Mr. Lorick said. “But the most important thing is that I feel like I’m on a path that makes sense and where I have the opportunity to grow.”Before Adquena Faine began an I.B.M. apprenticeship to become a cloud storage engineer, she was driving for ride-hailing services to support herself and her daughter, dealing with the erratic income and sore back that came with it.“I really hate driving now,” she said. “I could feel the car vibrating even when I wasn’t in the car.”She had attended but not completed college, and served in the Air Force, but the information technology industry was new to her.“They were confident they could teach me what I needed to know,” she said. “It was intense, but I didn’t want to let myself down or my baby girl down.”The hiring of Ms. Faine and Mr. Lorick was part of a deliberate effort by I.B.M. to rethink how it hires and what counts as a qualification for a given job.The apprenticeship program began in 2017, and thousands of people have moved through that and similar programs. Executives concluded that the qualifications for many jobs were unnecessarily demanding. Postings might require applicants to have a bachelor’s degree, for example, in jobs that a six-month training course would adequately prepare a person for.“By creating your own dumb barriers, you’re actually making your job in the search for talent harder,” said Obed Louissaint, I.B.M.’s senior vice president for transformation and culture. In working with managers across the company on training initiatives like the one under which Mr. Lorick was hired, “it’s about making managers more accountable for mentoring, developing and building talent versus buying talent.”“I think something fundamental is changing, and it’s been happening for a while, but now it’s accelerating,” Mr. Louissaint said.Efforts like the one at I.B.M. are, to some degree, a rediscovery in the value of investing in workers.“I do think companies need to relearn some things,” said Byron Auguste, chief executive of Opportunity at Work, an organization devoted to encouraging job opportunities for people from all backgrounds. “A lot of companies, after the recessions in 2001 and 2008, dismantled their onboarding and training infrastructure and said that’s a cost we can’t afford.“But it turns out, you actually do need to develop your own workers and can’t just depend on hiring.”Any job involves much more than a paycheck. Some good jobs don’t pay much, and some bad jobs pay a lot. Ultimately, every position is a bundle of things: a salary, yes, but also a benefits package; a work environment that may or may not be pleasant; opportunities to advance (or not); flexible hours (or not).Statistics agencies collect pretty good data on the aspects of jobs that are quantifiable, especially salary and benefits, and not such great data on other dimensions of what makes a job good or bad. But it is clear, as the labor market tightens, that people routinely favor those less quantifiable advantages.That has become vividly apparent in the restaurant industry, which is facing extreme labor shortages.“Traditionally in restaurants, it was: ‘Hey, this is the job. If you want these hours, great; if not, we’ll find somebody else,’” said Christopher Floyd, owner of the hospitality industry recruitment firm Capital Restaurant Resources in Washington. “Now employers have to say, ‘You have the qualities we’re looking for; maybe we can work out a more flexible schedule that works for you.’ Employers are becoming much more cognizant that yes, it’s about money, but also about quality of life.”Whether it’s a bigger paycheck, more manageable hours, or a training opportunity offered to a person with few formal credentials, the benefits of a tight labor market and shifting leverage can take many forms.What they have in common — no matter how long this shift toward workers lasts, or how powerful a force it turns out to be — is that it puts the employee in the position that matters most: the driver’s seat. More

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    Federal Unemployment Aid Is Now a Political Lightning Rod

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    Republican-led states are cutting off relief months ahead of schedule, citing openings aplenty. Some jobless workers face hardships and tough choices.Of the more than four million people whose jobless benefits are going to be cut off in the next few weeks, Bre Starr will be among the first.That’s because Ms. Starr — a 34-year-old pizza delivery driver who has been out of work for more than a year — lives in Iowa, where the governor has decided to withdraw from all federal pandemic-related jobless assistance next Saturday.Iowa is one of 25 states, all led by Republicans, that have recently decided to halt some or all emergency benefits months ahead of schedule. With a Labor Department report on Friday showing that job growth fell below expectations for the second month in a row, Republicans stepped up their argument that pandemic jobless relief is hindering the recovery.The assistance, renewed in March and funded through Sept. 6, doesn’t cost the states anything. But business owners and managers have argued that the income, which enabled people to pay rent and stock refrigerators when much of the economy shut down, is now dissuading them from applying for jobs.“Now that our businesses and schools have reopened, these payments are discouraging people from returning to work,” Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa said in announcing the cutoff. “We have more jobs available than unemployed people.”While the governor complains that people aren’t returning to work soon enough, however, some Iowans respond that they are being forced to return too soon.“I’m a Type 1 diabetic, so it’s really important for me to stay safe from getting Covid,” Ms. Starr said, explaining that she was more prone to infection. “I know that for myself and other people who are high risk, we cannot risk going back into the work force until everything is good again.”But just what does “good again” mean?Covid-19 cases have been declining in Iowa as they have throughout the country, and deaths are at their lowest levels since last summer. State restrictions were lifted in February, businesses are reopening, and Iowa’s unemployment rate was 3.8 percent in April, the latest period for which state figures are available — much lower than the national 6.1 percent that month. (Unemployment rates in the 25 states that are cutting off benefits ranged from 2.8 percent to 6.7 percent.)Still, an average of 15,000 new cases and more than 400 related deaths are being reported daily across the country, and barely 40 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.Most economists say there is no clear, single explanation yet for the difficulty that some employers are having in hiring. Government relief may play a role in some cases, but so could a lack of child care, continuing fears about infection, paltry wages, difficult working conditions and normal delays associated with reopening a mammoth economy.The particular complaints that government benefits are sapping the desire to work have, nonetheless, struck a chord among Republican political leaders.In Ms. Starr’s case, Ms. Reynolds’s move to end federal jobless relief in Iowa is likely to have its intended effect.Ms. Starr can be counted among the long-term unemployed. She has relied on a mix of pandemic-related benefits since last spring, when she left her job as a delivery driver for Domino’s Pizza after co-workers started getting ill.She could probably have already gotten her job back; Domino’s in Des Moines is advertising for drivers. But Ms. Starr has been reluctant to apply.“A lot of people in Iowa don’t wear masks — they think that Covid is fake,” said Ms. Starr, who worries not only about her own susceptibility to infection but also about the health of her 71-year-old father, whom she helps care for: He has emphysema, diabetes and heart troubles.An early withdrawal from the federal government’s network of jobless relief programs affects everyone in the state who collects unemployment insurance. Ms. Starr, like all recipients, will lose a weekly $300 federal stipend that was designed to supplement jobless benefits, which generally replace a fraction of someone’s previous wage. In most of the states, the decision will also end Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which covers freelancers, part-timers and self-employed workers who are not normally eligible for unemployment insurance. And it will halt Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which continues paying people who have exhausted their regular allotment.In addition to the $300 supplement, Ms. Starr gets $172 a week in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. The total is about $230 less than she earned at her previous job. The government checks pay for her rent, food and some of her father’s medicine, she said.Ms. Starr, who is vaccinated, said the governor’s order would probably force her to go back to work despite her health fears. She is thinking about some kind of customer service job from her home, although that would require her to buy a laptop and maybe get landline telephone service, she said. Absent that, she said, she may have to take another delivery job or work in an office.Whether her case is evidence that ending jobless benefits early makes sense depends on one’s perspective.A brewery in Phoenix. As local economies flicker back to life, federal emergency benefits have prompted a debate over whether pandemic jobless relief is helping or hindering the recovery.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesIn many cases, the problem is not that people don’t want to work, said Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Rather, benefits give the jobless more options, he said, like an ability “to say no to things that maybe aren’t safe or aren’t good fits.”Mr. Rothstein, though, cautioned against drawing broad conclusions.“The reopening happened really quickly,” he said. As a result, he said, it’s not surprising that there is friction in ramping up and hiring that could be unrelated to benefits. “It may just be that it takes a few weeks to reopen,” he added. “Some of the trouble employers are having in finding workers is that they all tried to find them the same day.”At the online job site Indeed, job searches in states that announced an early end to federal unemployment benefits picked up relative to the national trend. But the increase was modest — about 5 percent — and vanished a week later, said Jed Kolko, the chief economist for Indeed. And low-wage jobs weren’t the only ones to attract more responses; so did finance positions and openings for doctors.Aside from any discussion about the impact of jobless benefits on the labor market, economists have warned of long-lasting scars inflicted on the economy by the pandemic.“It’s important to remember we are not going back to the same economy,” the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, has said. “This will be a different economy.”“The real concern,” he said, “is that longer-term unemployment can allow people’s skills to atrophy, their connections to the labor market to dwindle, and they have a hard time getting back to work.”Roughly 41 percent of the nation’s 9.3 million unemployed fall into the long-term category, defined as more than 26 weeks. About 28 percent of the total have been unemployed for more than a year.Historically, this group, which is disproportionately made up of Black and older Americans, has had a tougher time getting hired. That pattern was likely to be repeated even in the unusual circumstances caused by the pandemic, said Carl Van Horn, the founding director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.Employers tend to take a negative view of people who have been out of work for an extended period or have gaps in their résumés, regardless of the reasons, Mr. Van Horn said.“Employers always complain about not being able to find the job seeker they want at that moment at the price they are willing to pay, whether it’s the best economy in 50 years or a terrible economy,” he said.The problem with prematurely ending jobless benefits, he said, is that “such a broad brush policy also punishes people who are also desperately looking for work.”That’s the situation that Amy Cabrera says she faces in Arizona. Since she was furloughed last summer, Ms. Cabrera, 45, has been living off about $500 a week in unemployment benefits, after taxes — roughly half the $50,000 salary in her previous job conducting audits in the meetings and events department at American Express.To make ends meet, she has given up the lease on her car and sublet a room in the house she rents in the San Tan Valley, southeast of Phoenix. “I’m paying for my food — whatever I need to survive — and that’s it,” she said, as she sat in the used 2006 Jeep she bought so she would not be carless. Food stamps are helping pay for her meals.But Ms. Cabrera rejected the idea that there were plenty of jobs to be had in Arizona, where the governor has moved to end the $300 federal supplement on July 10. Many positions she is qualified for, including executive administration and office management jobs, are paying $15 an hour, she said, far from enough to pay her $1,550 monthly rent and part of her son’s college tuition. Jobs in Phoenix or Tempe would require her to commute nearly two hours each way during rush hour. And because of a bad back, she can’t have a job that would require her to spend time on her feet.“I have desperately been looking for work,” Ms. Cabrera said. Still, of the roughly 100 jobs she estimated she had applied for, she has had only one interview.She said she didn’t know how she would live on her remaining unemployment benefits — $214 a week after taxes — when she loses the $300 supplement.“I really don’t have an answer for that yet,” she said. “I’ve really just been trying to roll with the punches.” More

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    Biden Says Enhanced Unemployment Benefits Will Expire Soon

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    As Republicans blame enhanced unemployment insurance for slower-than-expected job gains, the White House stresses that the benefit will expire in September as planned.With fresh data showing that American employers added jobs at a decent but unexceptional pace in May, President Biden on Friday emphasized that his administration would not try to extend enhanced unemployment benefits that Republicans have criticized as a key factor in fueling a labor shortage.The extent to which the extra $300 in weekly jobless benefits may be keeping workers sidelined is unclear. Some economists say insufficient child care and health concerns may be the main drivers behind Americans not seeking jobs, while unemployment insurance and other pandemic-era policies are giving people the financial flexibility to choose to remain out of work.But the pace of hiring has been somewhat disappointing in recent months, and business complaints about worker shortages abound. The U.S. added 559,000 jobs in May, a solid number but one that fell short of analyst expectations of 675,000 jobs. The prior month was a more significant miss: Just 278,000 jobs were added at a time when analysts were expecting a million.The Biden administration on Friday celebrated the May job gains as a sign that the labor market is healing from the pandemic downturn and that its policies are working. But White House officials indicated they would not try to renew the enhanced jobless benefits, which expire in September, saying they were meant to be temporary.“It’s going to expire in 90 days,” Mr. Biden said, speaking in Rehoboth Beach, Del. “That makes sense.”At least 25 states have already moved to end the extra $300 beginning this month, a decision that Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Friday was completely within their purview. While the administration views the benefit as an “extra helping hand” for workers, some governors disagree and “that’s OK,” she said.“Every governor is going to make their own decision,” she said.The White House’s move to de-emphasize the benefit, which Democrats included in the $1.9 trillion economic relief bill that passed in March, risks angering progressives. But it could also help to shift the narrative toward the broader set of priorities the Biden administration hopes to pass in the months ahead, including a huge infrastructure plan.“This is progress — historic progress,” Mr. Biden said. “Progress that’s pulling our economy out of the worst crisis it’s been in in 100 years.”He added that the recovery was not going to be smooth — “we’re going to hit some bumps along the way” — and that further support that bolsters the economy for the longer term was needed.“Now’s the time to build on the foundation we’ve laid,” Mr. Biden said.Payrolls are still 7.6 million jobs below their prepandemic level. Economic officials, including those at the Federal Reserve, had been hoping for a series of strong labor market reports this spring as vaccinations spread and the economy reopens more fully from state and local lockdowns that were meant to contain the pandemic. In April, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, pointed approvingly to the March jobs report, which had shown payrolls picking up by nearly a million positions.“We want to see a string of months like that,” he said.Instead, gains have proceeded unevenly. Job openings are high and wages are rising, suggesting that at least part of the disconnect comes from labor shortages. That is surprising at a time when the unemployment rate is officially 5.8 percent, and even higher after accounting for people who have dropped out of the labor market during the pandemic.Economists say many things could be driving the worker shortage — it takes time to reopen a large economy, and there is still a pandemic — but the trend has opened a line of attack for Republicans. They blame the enhanced unemployment benefits for discouraging people from returning to work and holding back what could be a faster recovery.“Long-term unemployment is higher than when the pandemic started, and labor force participation mirrors the stagnant 1970s,” Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a news release. “It’s time for President Biden to abandon his attack on American jobs, his tax increases, his anti-growth regulations and his obsession with more emergency spending and endless government checks.”Republican governors across the country have in recent weeks moved to end the supplemental unemployment benefits that began under President Donald J. Trump. The idea is that doing so will prod would-be workers back into jobs.A gas station near Rehoboth Beach offers incentives for new hires. Critics of the Biden administration say enhanced unemployment benefits are discouraging people from returning to work.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesMany progressives disagree with that assessment. Democratic leaders in Congress cited the latest employment report as a sign that lawmakers should move to enact the rest of Mr. Biden’s plans to invest in roads, water pipes, low-emission energy deployment, home health care, paid leave and a variety of other infrastructure and social programs — but also that the government should continue to support workers who remain on the sidelines.“The American people need all the support they can get, especially Black and Hispanic communities that were among the hardest hit by the pandemic,” Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr., Democrat of Virginia and the chairman of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, said in a news release, urging lawmakers to “step up.”Fed officials, who are in charge of setting the stage for full employment and stable prices by guiding the cost of borrowing money, are likely to interpret the May report cautiously. The acceleration in job growth was good news, but the report also offered clear evidence that the labor market remains far from healed.“I view it as a solid employment report,” Loretta J. Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said on CNBC following the release. “But I’d like to see further progress.”The central bank is buying $120 billion in bonds each month and holding its main policy interest rate at near-zero, policies that keep borrowing cheap and help to stoke demand. Fed officials have said they would need to see “substantial” further progress toward their two goals — maximum employment and stable inflation — before beginning to remove monetary support by scaling down their bond buying program.Ms. Mester made clear that the May report did not reach that standard.“I would like to see a little bit more on the labor market to really see that we’re on track,” she said.Officials have an even higher hurdle for lifting interest rates: They want to see a return to full employment and signs that inflation is likely to stay above 2 percent for some time.Inflation has been moving higher this year, but Fed officials have said they expect much of the pop in prices to be temporary, caused by data quirks and a temporary mismatch as the economy reopens and demand outpaces supply.While the Fed is primarily in charge of controlling inflation, the Biden administration has also been reviewing supply chain issues and hoping to address some of them.Brian Deese, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said the administration had identified concrete steps and a long-term strategy to make supply chains for things like semiconductors more resilient. In other areas, like housing materials, the solution may involve convening private-sector actors to figure out a possible strategy.Ms. Psaki said the White House would talk about their plans “when we have more details to share, and hopefully that will be next week.” More