Jobless Benefits May Be the Intended Victim of Fast Reopenings
Opening up now won’t save businesses, but workers scared of going back could be kicked off unemployment insurance.
Help is right.
Photographer: Jonathan Alcorn/Bloomberg
Many states are racing to reopen their economies before measures such as testing, contact tracing and full-time mask-wearing are in place. But the one of biggest economic effects of a hasty end of lockdowns adopted to limit the spread of the coronavirus won’t be to save businesses; it will be to kick people off of desperately needed government assistance.
While almost all other developed nations are seeing their new Covid-19 cases decline as a result of lockdowns and other public-health measures, the U.S. has only managed to reach a plateau. State-by-state data paints an even grimmer picture with infections and deaths falling in the hard-hit New York City metro area but rising elsewhere.
In this dire situation, it would seem imprudent to lift lockdowns nationwide. Although a few states -- Alaska, Hawaii and a handful of others -- have low case growth, copious testing and teams of contact tracers standing ready to catch outbreaks before they can spread, most are not ready yet. And in fact, most Americans want government to wait before reopening: