It seems that no one who has ever been on unemployment ever writes about it - or gets it published. Otherwise, the fact that benefits cover only a fraction of prior wages - and are capped - would be in the lede or initial paragraph every time. Oregon, for instance, has a handy benefit calculator. The current maximum is $538/week, reached at a salary of $43K/year or $828/week - 65% of prior wages. Someone earning $400/week will receive $260/week in benefits. If the average benefit is $300/month in Oregon, the average pre-layoff income was $460/week or $23K/year - the 2013 poverty level for a family of four. And if you earned less than $18K/year, working a part-time job - it will be less than 65% of previous wages. Working half-time at minimum wage gives only 33% in UI benefits.
For most people that's a substantial hardship. How big a hardship? None, according to some people, who characterize it as, for instance, a hammock:
In 2011, Paul Ryan notoriously said,
We are at a moment, where if government's growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America's best century will be considered our past century. This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.
Soooo... what happens to most Americans at 65% earnings? They dip into their savings significantly - if they have any. The bottom 40% of the income distribution - those who most need the assistance - are those least likely to have liquid assets. For families with incomes under $25K/year, 64% have less than
five hundred dollars of savings (table 8).
The bottom 20% of the household incomes are in households with a 2007 median net worth of $8,100. For the next quintile, the median was $37,900. And that's not just liquid assets like cash , bonds, or stocks. Net worth includes cars and home equity, which are most of the wealth of these families. Lack of a safety net then quickly requires selling vehicles, thus further limiting job choices; and losing homes, as those lucky enough to have mortgages are foreclosed and those renting are evicted, also making getting and keeping a job harder.
All in all, then, an inadequate safety net is a road to serfdom. Seems to me that someone else has used that title with a different slant, but that's for another day.