Unemployment boosts economy says DoL

The Department of Labor (DoL) has released its report on multi-year study on the positive effects of unemployment insurance on the economy. Important findings:

• For every dollar spent on UI, economic activity increases by two dollars.
• During each quarter of the recent recession, UI benefits kept an average of 1.6 million Americans on the job.
• At the height of the recession, UI benefits averted 1.8 million job losses and kept the unemployment rate approximately 1.2 percentage points lower.
• UI benefits reduced the fall in GDP by 18 percent. Nominal GDP was $175 billion higher in 2009 than it would have been without UI benefits. In total, unemployment insurance kept GDP $315 billion higher from the start of the recession through the second quarter of 2010.

Full report is here.

Strikers and unemployment

We do not see a lot of lockouts in this part of the country. In the Temple nurses' labor dispute the fact of a lockout dramatically affected the cost of the labor dispute. Under Pennsylvania law strikers are not eligible for unemployment, but when the employer locks out the employees, the employees are eligible for unemployment. More details in this news article.