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Promoting Reemployment and Safeguarding Benefits

From Unemployment to Reemployment.

State unemployment insurance (UI) programs are meant to serve as a temporary safety net while individuals look for work—not as a permanent entitlement. Due to shortsighted pandemic policies that lingered long after jobs returned, many people remained on UI for as many as 20 months while getting paid more to stay home than find work. This should never happen again.

Even now, long after the pandemic itself, the United States is experiencing a major worker shortage as businesses in every state desperately search for employees to fill jobs and try to keep their doors open.

Policymakers at the state and federal level have a role to play by implementing reforms that help move individuals from unemployment to reemployment. It is all about unleashing the power of work, allowing even more Americans to find fulfillment, dignity, and prosperity for themselves and their families.

Indexing unemployment benefits

Unemployment programs also must be reformed to weather future economic downturns. UI trust funds in many states have been depleted because of fraud and abuse that only worsened during the pandemic, largely due to the very policies that were sold to states as a way out of the crisis.

Safeguards should be put in place to:

  • Detect fraud before it happens;
  • Prevent the ineligible from drawing benefits; and
  • Preserve resources for the truly needy.

Our Promoting Reemployment and Safeguarding Benefits Experts
Haley Holik

Senior Fellow

Hayden Dublois

Data and Analytics Director

Jonathan Bain

Senior Research Fellow

Jonathan Ingram

Vice President of Policy and Research

Kristi Stahr

Senior Data Analyst

Sam Adolphsen

Policy Director

Scott Centorino

Visiting Fellow

Trevor Carlsen

Senior Research Fellow

At FGA, we don’t just talk about changing policy—we make it happen.

By partnering with FGA through a gift, you can create more policy change that returns America to a country where entrepreneurship thrives, personal responsibility is rewarded, and paychecks replace welfare checks.