Roughly 16 million Americans will be impacted by the approaching end of unemployment benefits. On Saturday, June 12, Iowa, Missouri, Alaska, and Mississippi will no longer accept extra benefits from COVID relief initiatives.
Other states opting out soon thereafter include, but are not limited to, Florida, Georgia, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming, along with several others.
Conservatives remain confident that this will push more Americans to seek work at some of the many businesses looking to hire staff.
The disappointing April 2021 jobs report
The jobs report for April 2021 served as a wake-up call for many leaders, notably Republicans. During this time, the economy gained only 266K jobs; this is well below the anticipated 1M mark from economists. The aforementioned jobs report also demonstrated that much work lies ahead before the economy fully recovers.
At this time, the COVID relief program that many states are opting out of expires in September. Some Democrats are pushing the Biden administration to make the extra $330 weekly payments permanent; however, the president has stood by the decision for the payments to end in about 90 days.
