Where are the workers? Cutoff of jobless aid spurs no influx

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Earlier this year, an insistent cry arose from business leaders and Republican governors: Cut off a $300-a-week federal supplement for unemployed Americans. Many people, they argued, would then come off the sidelines and take the millions of jobs that employers were desperate to fill.

Yet three months after half the states began ending that federal payment, there's been no significant influx of job seekers.

In states that cut off the $300 check, the workforce — the number of people who either have a job or are looking for one — has risen no more than it has in the states that maintained the payment. That federal aid, along with two jobless aid programs that served gig workers and the long-term unemployed, ended nationally Sept. 6. Yet America's overall workforce actually shrank that month.

“Policymakers were pinning too many hopes on ending unemployment insurance as a labor market boost,” said Fiona Greig, managing director of the JPMorgan Chase Institute, who has studied the issue.

Labor shortages have persisted longer than many economists expected, deepening a mystery at the heart of the job market. Companies are eager to add workers and have posted a near-record number of available jobs. Yet job growth slowed in August and September.

An Associated Press analysis of state data found that workforces in the 25 states that maintained the $300 payment actually grew slightly more from May through September, according to data released Friday, than in the 25 states that cut off the payment early, most of them in June. The $300-a-week federal check, on top of state jobless aid, meant that many of the unemployed received more in benefits than they earned at their old jobs.

Economists cite a range of factors that are likely keeping former recipients of...