Stephen Moore: States Must Stop Paying People Extra Not to Work

 

By Eric Mack

States struggling to get people back to work must stop the expanding unemployment benefits, former Trump economist Stephen Moore implored.

"We've got to get back to policies that encourage people to work," Moore told Sunday's "The Cats Roundtable" on WABC 770 AM-N.Y. "It's going on for 18 months now."

"There's dignity in work. There is self-worth in work."

Moore lamented to host John Catsimatidis the labor market has more than 10 million jobs available and a shortage of willing workers to fill them.

"Here's the big picture for the labor market: We have 10.2 million jobs open today – never before have we had that many 'help wanted' signs," Moore said.

"The question is why? Why is it becoming so difficult to get Americans back to work? Certainly, the delta variant had something to do with the disappointing numbers we had this month, but there's something bigger here.

"We're paying people not to work with high unemployment benefits and expanded food stamps."

The COVID-19 pandemic has created so much free stimulus for Americans to stay home it is increasingly difficult to get the unemployed motivated to work again, Moore added.

"There are a lot of Americans who figure, 'Hey, I can make just about as much money not going back to work as going back on the job,'" he said.

Moore pointed to the Friday jobs report from August, which was not as bad as it seems but came woefully short of high expectations.

"It significantly missed expectations, but not quite as disappointing as some people say it was," Moore said. "We only created 250,000 jobs. We were supposed to create about three times that number. But, on the other hand, there was a revision upwards from the previous month. It was a decent number.

"The good news is that Labor Day is Monday, and that is the day officially when these extra unemployment benefits end. I do think as we end those extra unemployment benefits, we will start to see some of the workers going back to the job."