NELP commentary on Obama Administration UI proposals

Rick McHugh of the National Employment Law Project has two posts describing the Obama Administration’s unemployment proposals.

In the first post, he notes that the Administration wants to mandate a norm of 26 weeks of state UI benefits, which currently exists in Wisconsin after the waiting week, use of an alternative base period for determining eligibility for UI benefits (also currently available in Wisconsin), opening up UI eligibility to those looking for part-time work (currently NOT available in Wisconsin), and requiring states to allow workers to quit jobs for compelling family circumstances without losing unemployment benefits (currently available in Wisconsin but not well-enforced).

The Administration is also offering $5 billion in funds to states for modernization efforts and an option to create a volunteer work option — aka Georgia Works — for claimants.

In the second post, McHugh describes how the administration wants to: (a) institutionalize a four-tiered extended benefits program and the triggers for such benefits; (b) mandate minimum UI taxes, index the taxable wage base for unemployment taxes to inflation, impose a minimum state UI tax rate, and create new triggers for an increase in federal UI taxes when a state’s UI reserves fall below certain thresholds; and (c) make work-share options a permanent feature of the unemployment system.

The declining market for unemployment benefits

Claire McKenna and Rick McHugh of NELP describe how unemployment benefits continue to be artificially low across the nation in 2015. Their key finding:

Using the latest data, we find that the recipiency rate in 2015 remained at a record low, with just over one in four jobless workers (27 percent) receiving UI benefits in 2015.

Their measure for a recipiency rate actually shows Wisconsin as above-average in the nation at 36%. As noted in their discussion of their methodology, there are several ways to measure recipiency rates. Their measure, for instance, does not account for penalty weeks (such as those where over-payments are being recovered because of concealment). Given the push for alleging concealment in Wisconsin, this 36% recipiency rate in Wisconsin is probably too generous.