Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, is advocating for expanding the unemployment system with $600 weekly federal benefits. However, Dr. Eric Fruits, Vice President of Research at Cascade Policy Institute, warns in an interview with KATU News that increasing unemployment benefits can have consequences for employers.
He observed, “We’re going to have a lot of pressure to go back to work. Because… employers want to bring people back to work, they want to sell stuff, do stuff. We want to encourage people to go back to work, and if they are paid to stay home, that will be a disincentive to do so.”
Senator Wyden has also been pushing for a system of unemployment benefits that tie to economic conditions. When the economy is bad, benefits go up. When the economy is good, benefits go down.
However, this would require a serious overhaul of Oregon’s unemployment system, which has historically underperformed. Dr. Fruits notes that “Even the smallest tweaks to unemployment can cause havoc in the unemployment system.”
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