Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Biden’s Unemployment Checks Would Harm Economy

It made sense to pay people extra to stay home last March. It won’t make sense this spring.

February 11, 2021 at 2:00 PM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

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At a time when the economy is growing rapidly again, the last thing Congress should do is make unemployment more financially rewarding than working.

Unfortunately, a part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan would do just that. The president proposes paying unemployed workers a $400 weekly supplement on top of other jobless benefits they receive. If adopted, the additional funds will have the perverse effect of hurting the labor market, leading to more joblessness.