Unemployment Insurance Isn’t Ideal for Helping Workers

The federal government’s $2 trillion economic relief bill to help the nation cope with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has many excellent features. The amount of money is large -- probably enough to cushion and sustain the economy for the next two months. To some extent, the bill addresses the needs of individuals, families, small businesses, big businesses, and state and local governments.

But there are lingering questions about the bill’s unintended consequences. Many of them involve the bill’s heavy reliance on the unemployment-insurance system. The small-business lending program does reward employers for keeping workers on payroll through the shutdown and the bill does give them a modest universal payout. But mainly the bill is designed to wait for people to lose their jobs and then giving them money.