Back to Insights

Unemployment: Insurance and Incentives

June 1, 2020 | Commentary

  • Since widespread pandemic economic shutdowns began, every week has seen millions of new jobless claims.  The total is now over 40 million.  This has naturally raised questions about how much strain this is placing on the budgets of states that have primary responsibility for managing unemployment insurance (UI) programs.
  • The good news is that UI anticipates big macroeconomic shocks.  Once the insurance pool is depleted, states can borrow without limit from the federal government to pay the unemployed.  These borrowings have low interest rates and are paid back from rated employers paying future payroll taxes.  There are many factors that are challenging to state budgets these days.  UI payments are not among them.
  • In the rush to create fiscal stimulus and help workers laid off because of the virus, Congress allocated extra money to supplement normal state UI benefits.  This has had the unintended consequence of paying most of the unemployed more for staying home than they received working full time.  This is the wrong incentive to promote economic recovery as businesses begin to reopen.
  • If extra federal benefits are extended past their scheduled termination on July 31, large parts of the labor force will choose to remain on the sidelines, slowing the economic recovery and permanently damaging survival probabilities for millions of small businesses.

To continue reading and to learn more about Offit Capital, login or contact us.

Connect Now

Privacy Notice

Provided in accordance with the Securities and Exchange Commission's rule regarding the privacy of consumer financial information (Regulation S-P).

Information We Collect

Offit Capital must collect certain personally identifiable financial information about its clients to ensure that it offers the highest quality financial services and products. The personally identifiable financial information which we gather during the normal course of doing business with you may include:

Information We Disclose

We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our clients or former clients to anyone, except as permitted by law. Nonpublic personal information means personally identifiable financial information and any list, description or other grouping of clients that is derived using any personally identifiable financial information that is not publicly available.

In accordance with Section 248.13 of Regulation S-P, we may disclose all of the information we collect, as described above, to certain nonaffiliated third parties such as attorneys, accountants, auditors and persons or entities that are assessing our compliance with industry standards. We enter into contractual agreements with all nonaffiliated third parties that prohibit such third parties from disclosing or using the information other than to carry out the purposes for which we disclose the information.

Confidentiality & Security

We restrict access to nonpublic personal information about you to those employees who need to know that information to provide financial products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard your nonpublic personal information.

Forgot your password? No Account? Request Access.

Request Access

Note: You will be emailed an access link upon submitting this form.