As I told them at the time, a lot of this is due to poor program design - RTW programs (with Colorado as an exception) had burdensome processes in place that made it very hard for people to access them.
We're used to thinking about unemployment primarily with respect to business cycle/involuntary employment.
But this is point at something that is pretty different. Basically that there are some people at the margin where a small change in their incentives will drive them into or out of the labor force.
Feels like we are all discussing what pieces of the Reconciliation Bill can be cut. But, especially after last Friday's job report, Congress should be looking for ways to put UI back in. Me at @NiskanenCenter: niskanencenter.org/congress-shoul…
With the enhanced UI ending last month, a lot of people were hoping that we'd see a big jump in September's employment numbers. We didn't.
Between this and the evidence that accumulated over the summer, it's getting hard to argue that the enhanced UI benefits were the main problem holding the job market back.
Quick pause in the jobs day discourse! Yesterday, a paper from the Becker Friedman Institute came out, with new estimated effects of the CTC on employment (🔼) and poverty (🔽). I've got a response at @niskanencenter here: niskanencenter.org/reevaluating-t…
for that, and I'm sure other folks are looking at the paper now.
But how should we interpret the findings as given?
1.) The paper reinforces one important claim we've made before - that very few people will stop working because of the money they get from the CTC (what economists' call the "income effect".)
@EconHembre Yeah - I think the majority of critiques can also be applied the EITC.
@EconHembre A plausible defense of the EITC is something like:
1.) Because EITC is implemented through the tax code, the additional administrative burdens are smaller. 2.) EITC is possibly a bit more legible to recipients.
@EconHembre You could also point to the existence of VITA. Not sure if that ways for (there's lots of support to file for EITC) or against (we need a whole program to help people receive EITC!).