Yet another pointless, regressive WisGOP "reform" of unemployment

It appears like the Republicans in Wisconsin are coming up with a new list of “reforms” to the state's unemployment benefits and programming. Let's take a look, shall we?

The GOP ideas include drug testing those claiming unemployment benefits, providing cash payments to businesses that hire the long-term unemployed — meaning those who have collected benefits for more than 27 weeks — and directing job seekers to apply for specific job positions.

However, some measures in the proposal — including one that would force Gov. Tony Evers to direct federal COVID-19 stimulus dollars to businesses that hire the long-term unemployed — may set the bill up for a veto as the Democratic governor has rejected similar GOP measures related to the use of federal funds in the past.

Or maybe Evers will veto the bill BECAUSE THIS DOESN’T DO JACK TO DEAL WITH OUR WORKER SHORTAGE. And any data that you can look at on Wisconsin’s job market would tell you that.

We’ve had several months where oligarchs at WMC and other “business groups” have insisted that there was some hidden group of workers on the sidelines that just needed to have their CARES-era benefits cut off. But we know that’s not true, first because ALEC/GOP states that cut workers off of those expanded benefits hurt their own state’s economy, with little boost for their job market.

This is from a report by the Economic Policy Institute from 3 weeks ago, after the last monthly jobs reports from every state came out.

Claims that the pandemic unemployment benefits have slowed economy-wide job growth—which fueled the state-level terminations—are false. Instead, any potential gain to job growth driven by lower benefits chasing people into the labor market seems to have been offset by two counterweights: first, a consumer demand effect, in which there is a drag on growth stemming from reduced household spending when UI benefits are lost; and second, a “congestion” effect, in which job gains among former UI recipients crowd out other job seekers.

In fact, new research from a team of economists shows that the early, state-level UI terminations significantly reduced total incomes and consumer spending. The study found the benefit losses following these early terminations led to only the smallest boost in job-finding: Earnings from work rose by only $14 per UI recipient per week in states that cut off benefits, but weekly UI income fell by $278, for an average weekly net income loss of $264 per recipient. Because of lower total incomes, UI recipients spent $145 less weekly. On an annualized basis, the average person losing UI saw their annual income drop by $13,728, leading to an annual spending reduction of $7,450.

So making it harder to get benefits and cutting people off of unemployment (which the GOP bill tries to do) only succeeds in forcing people to settle for crappier jobs, and they spend less in the overall economy.

The only people that might have gained from these cutoffs are employers who got a needier group of workers to deal with (in normal times, anyway). Remarkably, the WisGOPs want to give those business owners another break by giving them the bonus for hiring workers that have been out of work for more than 26 weeks.

And take a guess where the funding for these payments to employers goes to? Yep, the stimulus funds that were sent to Wisconsin earlier this year, in a transparent attempt to keep Governor Evers from using those funds in a different (and more productive) way.

The legislation also would require the governor to provide employers with up to two $1,000 payments for hiring a person who has been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. The payments would be to help cover costs including wages, training and benefits. The bill dictates that those funds would need to come from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

The bill has yet to be introduced, and I want to see if there are any requirements included on how much those workers get paid, or for long they have to be kept on (I’m betting there won’t be much….if any).

Stupid enough, but we also know that there isn’t some huge mass of Wisconsin workers that have been sitting back collecting unemployment instead of getting a job. In each of the last 6 months measured, the number of Wisconsinites in the labor force and working has risen, even with the $300/week add-on to unemployment benefits.

At the same time, the number of Wisconsinites on unemployment generally declined throughout the summer, even before they were cut off of PUA and the extended-claims PEUC program.

Wisconsin DWD officials note that this bill duplicates things that they do already, except that WisGOPs want to add on paperwork and unfunded mandates to those duties.

Jennifer Sereno, spokesperson for the state Department of Workforce Development, said the department has “significant concerns” about the GOP proposal due to the anticipated reporting burden for employers, potential costs associated with the bill and a lack of a sustainable funding source. Sereno also said the department is already carrying out several provisions detailed in the proposal, including providing reemployment services and work-search requirements.

The real problem is that WisGOPs are looking in the wrong direction when it comes to dealing with the workforce shortages and mismatches. The Journal-Sentinel had an article on the state's workforce issues today, and it is clear that the biggest workforce problem this state has is a demographic one.

Businesses are still struggling to find employees as older workers age out of the workforce. It’s a problem that has staying power, said Dennis Winters, chief economist for the DWD...

“We’ve known based on the age demographics of the population and the workforce, the older workers are aging out of the workforce, the Baby Boomers, and there weren’t enough folks coming in behind them to replace them.”

In an attempt to attract employees, businesses have increased their wages, offered signing bonuses and other benefits.

“Those are solutions to a micro-business problem,” Winters said. “Unfortunately, the underlying problem that we have with the workforce is a macro-problem, which is just not enough bodies to go around.”

And the only way you solve that is to find a way to make Wisconsin more attractive for workers to want to come here and raise their families here. But that involves the potential of taking away market share from established businesses, and not passing socially regressive BS that stirs up fundies and other rubes. And since that lessens the chances of Republicans getting votes and donations, that isn't going to happen as long as they're allowed to run any part of this state's government.

See Republicans really don’t care about making things better for Wisconsinites that have fallen out of work. They work for business owners, and want to make it as easy for those mediocrities as much as possible. No matter how much it slants the field against everyone else, harming the mass majority of the rest of us and holds our economy back.