Baker signals no plans to drop $300 bonus weekly unemployment checks
Gov. Charlie Baker signaled he wouldn’t join a growing number of Republican-led states that have moved to cancel the federal government’s $300 boost in weekly unemployment benefits.
The governor said Wednesday his focus is to “aggressively reopen our economy and create the jobs for people and then let people find their way back to work.”
Speaking at a Moderna lab in Norwood, Baker added, “Massachusetts, as we all know, is a very high-cost state and the majority of people who were most profoundly impacted by the pandemic and by some of the rules that we put into place were what I would refer to as working people.”
Baker’s remarks come amid an outcry from employers over a shortage of workers and as the unemployment rate remains more than double what it was at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Job openings, meanwhile, rose nearly 8%, to 8.1 million in March, the most on record dating back to December 2000, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.
Business industry groups nationally and locally have upped the pressure on officials to incentivize a return to work as thousands continue to make more on unemployment than when earning wages.
Red states joined ranks with Montana, Arkansas and South Carolina, where governors last week moved to cancel the extra benefits early, citing concerns people were choosing not to go back to work. States choosing to ax the benefits include Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming.
The added unemployment benefits extended by the federal government are slated to expire in September.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/33ElppM
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