EDITORIAL: Get a job, please!
May 18—Something is wrong when you have to bribe people to take a job. It seems particularly strange in Connecticut right now when the unemployment rate is 8.3%. Only Hawaii and New York have higher rates of unemployment.
In an attempt to drive down that unemployment number and convince people to apply for work — the state has an estimated 65,000 job openings — Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday that Connecticut will offer $1,000 signing bonuses to those who have been out of work at least eight weeks if they take a full-time job.
The check will arrive after a worker has been on the new job two months. Up to 10,000 bonuses are planned, at a cost of $10 million, using federal pandemic-relief dollars.
Lamont is opting for the carrot to nudge the reluctant back into the workforce, but the stick should soon follow.
When a year ago the pandemic was forcing unprecedented numbers of people out of their jobs, Congress enhanced unemployment payments and the state lifted the requirement that people had to show proof of job searching to continue receiving payments.
These policies made sense at the time. As businesses closed due to fears of the quickly spreading, sometimes fatal virus, about which so little was known, people were out of work through no fault of their own. A failure to prop up their income beyond normal unemployment compensation risked inviting total economic collapse. Likewise, it made no sense to enforce the usual job-search mandate because there were no jobs.
But now there are. On July 1, Connecticut will reinstate a search-for-work requirement as a condition of unemployment payments. That's the right move.
The $300 federal jobless supplement is set to end in September. Unless something awful happens to reignite the pandemic — please, no — or there is some other unforeseen calamity, that supplemental payment should also end. And Lamont should consider ending it sooner in Connecticut if his bonus doesn't fill jobs.
Lamont offered other explanations for the paradoxical condition of high unemployment and record job openings. Older workers who went on unemployment are essentially retired and not looking to return to work. Closed schools, and the lack of affordable day care, has made it tough for both parents to reenter the workplace, with women more often the ones staying home.
The $1,000 jump start is worth a try. Connecticut needs to get back to work.
The Day editorial board meets regularly with political, business and community leaders and convenes weekly to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Tim Dwyer, Editorial Page Editor Paul Choiniere, Managing Editor Izaskun E. Larrañeta, staff writer Erica Moser and retired deputy managing editor Lisa McGinley. However, only the publisher and editorial page editor are responsible for developing the editorial opinions. The board operates independently from the Day newsroom.
