Economists Tout Unemployment Benefits Program

By Ji Hyun Yoo

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) executive director Robert Greenstein and CBPP chief economist Chad Stone told reporters during a recent conference call that federal unemployment benefits play a major role in the recovery of the American economy. 

“If you go back in 1950, you find that never did Congress allowed these federal unemployment benefits to end when the unemployment rate exceeded 7.2 percent. Today it’s 9.6 percent, yet the question of whether the federal benefits would be continued is in doubt,” Greenstein said.

Stone reinforced that notion and said that “now is not the time to end the program” because the program is “good for unemployed workers, good for the economy and doesn’t endanger efforts to get the long-term budget deficit under control.”

“Unemployment benefits are a job creator,” Stone said. “They provide financial assistance predominantly to middle-class families in tough economic times and those families spend that money.”