IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/94389.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Increasing Employment by Halting Pandemic Unemployment Benefits

Author

Listed:

Abstract

In mid-2021, 26 states halted participation in all or some federal emergency unemployment benefits (EUB) programs before those programs' federal funding lapsed. This article uses this asynchronous EUB cessation between early- and late-halting states to estimate the causal impact of benefit cessation on employment. We find that cessation increased employment by 29 persons for every 100 (pre-halt) EUB recipients. Expressed as a number of jobs, if all states had halted EUB in June, September employment would have been 3.4 million persons higher relative to a no-halt counterfactual. Late-halting states could have significantly accelerated their states' jobs recoveries in the second half of 2021 through early program cessation.

Suggested Citation

  • Iris Arbogast & Bill Dupor, 2022. "Increasing Employment by Halting Pandemic Unemployment Benefits," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 104(3), pages 166-177, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:94389
    DOI: 10.20955/r.104.166-77
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/2022/07/14/increasing-employment-by-halting-pandemic-unemployment-benefits.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20955/r.104.166-77?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Holzer, Harry J. & Hubbard, Glenn & Strain, Michael R., 2021. "Did Pandemic Unemployment Benefits Reduce Employment? Evidence from Early State-Level Expirations in June 2021," IZA Discussion Papers 14927, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. repec:cdl:indrel:qt9vb7w655 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Henry S. Farber & Jesse Rothstein & Robert G. Valletta, 2015. "The Effect of Extended Unemployment Insurance Benefits: Evidence from the 2012-2013 Phase-Out," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 171-176, May.
    4. Henry S. Farber & Jesse Rothstein & Robert G. Valletta, 2015. "The Effect of Extended Unemployment Insurance Benefits: Evidence from the 2012-2013 Phase-Out," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 171-176, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hamdi, Naser & Kalda, Ankit & Sovich, David, 2025. "Between a rock and a hard place: The costs and benefits of expanded unemployment insurance benefits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    2. Iris Arbogast & Bill Dupor, 2022. "The Jobs Effect of Ending Pandemic Unemployment Benefits: A State-Level Analysis," Working Papers 2022-010, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 08 Feb 2023.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Harry J. Holzer & Glenn Hubbard & Michael R. Strain, 2024. "Did pandemic unemployment benefits increase unemployment? Evidence from early state‐level expirations," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(1), pages 24-38, January.
    2. Lechthaler, Wolfgang & Ring, Patrick, 2021. "Labor force participation, job search effort and unemployment insurance in the laboratory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 748-778.
    3. Guo, Audrey, 2024. "Payroll tax incidence: Evidence from unemployment insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    4. Camarero Garcia, Sebastian & Hansch, Michelle, 2020. "The effect of unemployment insurance benefits on (self-)employment: Two sides of the same coin?," ZEW Discussion Papers 20-062, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    5. Legal, Diego & Young, Eric R., 2024. "The effect of minimum wages on consumer bankruptcy," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    6. Hie Joo Ahn, 2023. "The role of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the duration of unemployment," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 3-23, January.
    7. Gaillard, Alexandre & Kankanamge, Sumudu, 2021. "Entrepreneurship and Labor Market Mobility: the Role of Unemployment Insurance," TSE Working Papers 21-1187, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    8. Gerard Domènech-Arumí & Silvia Vannutelli, 2025. "Bringing Them In or Pushing Them Out? The Labor Market Effects of Pro-Cyclical Unemployment Assistance Changes," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 107(2), pages 324-337, March.
    9. Andrew C. Johnston & Alexandre Mas, 2018. "Potential Unemployment Insurance Duration and Labor Supply: The Individual and Market-Level Response to a Benefit Cut," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(6), pages 2480-2522.
    10. Karahan, Fatih & Mitman, Kurt & Moore, Brendan, 2019. "Individual and Market-Level Effects of UI Policies: Evidence from Missouri," IZA Discussion Papers 12805, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Hobbs, Duncan & Strain, Michael R., 2024. "Do Reemployment Bonuses Increase Employment? Evidence from the Idaho Return to Work Bonus Program," IZA Discussion Papers 16924, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Christopher Boone & Arindrajit Dube & Lucas Goodman & Ethan Kaplan, 2021. "Unemployment Insurance Generosity and Aggregate Employment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 58-99, May.
    13. Sansale, Rebecca & DeLoach, Stephen B. & Kurt, Mark, 2019. "Unemployment duration and the personalities of young adults workers," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-11.
    14. Andrew Figura & David Ratner, 2017. "How Large were the Effects of Emergency and Extended Benefits on Unemployment during the Great Recession and its Aftermath?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-068, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Xu, Wenjian, 2018. "Entrepreneurship among the Unemployed: the Effect of Unemployment Benefit," SocArXiv 5dahz, Center for Open Science.
    16. Iris Arbogast & Bill Dupor, 2022. "The Jobs Effect of Ending Pandemic Unemployment Benefits: A State-Level Analysis," Working Papers 2022-010, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 08 Feb 2023.
    17. Edwards Kathryn Anne, 2020. "Who helps the unemployed? Workers’ receipt of public and private transfers," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 9(1), pages 1-26, March.
    18. MaCurdy, Thomas & Glick, David & Sherpa, Sonam & Nagavarapu, Sriniketh, 2024. "Reprint of: Profiling the plight of disconnected youth in America," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 243(1).
    19. Dahl, Gordon B. & Knepper, Matthew, 2021. "Why Is Workplace Sexual Harassment Underreported? The Value of outside Options amid the Threat of Retaliation," IZA Discussion Papers 14740, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Fatih Karahan & Kurt Mitman & Brendan Moore, 2019. "Micro and Macro Effects of UI Policies: Evidence from Missouri," Staff Reports 905, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:94389. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.