The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a lasting piece of the Social Security Act which was enacted in 1935. But like most things that are over 80 years old, it occasionally needs maintenance to keep it operating smoothly while keeping up with the changing demands placed upon it. However, the UI system has been ignored by policymakers for decades and, say the authors, it is broken, out of date, and badly in need of repair. Stephen A. Wandner pulls together a group of UI researchers, each with decades of experience, who describe the weaknesses in the current system and propose policy reforms that they say would modernize the system and prepare us for the next recession.
Termination pay includes severance, mass redundancy, or end-of-service pay and is widely used as income protection for the unemployed. This book reviews such arrangements wordwide, analyzing their performance and recent reform trends to improve efficiency and redistributive impact.
"Despite significant changes in U.S. labor market, the basic structure of the nation's unemployment insurance (UI) program has remained unchanged since it was created in 1935. The current system is in need for reform in order to meet the needs of a twenty-first century workforce. Shortfalls in the current program fall into four categories: (1) overly restrictive eligibility criteria have resulted in low recipience rates; (2) benefit levels are low; (3) the federal tax system used to finance the program is regressive; (4) and the mechanism to automatically extend UI during periods of prolonged economic downsturns is broken. As a result of these and other factors, only about one-third of unemployed workers currently receive assistance under the UI program, and that assistance falls short of the original goal of replacing at least half of previous earnings. In addition, the system provides no assistance either to the self-employed or to those who become reemployed at lower wages. In this paper we propose three broad reforms, each designed to help the UI system better meet the needs of a twenty-first century workforce. First, we propose strengthening the federal role in UI by setting federal standards that would aim to raise average national benefit levels and average national recipiency rates. Expansion in the program would be financed by raising the FUTA taxable wage base over time to 45,000 to for inflation over recent decades. Second, we propose a wage-loss insurance program, as part of the UI program, to provide an earnings supplement for those workers who become reemployed at a wage lower than the wage they earned at their previous job. Finally, we propose allowing self-employed workers, and perhaps others, to contribute up to 0.25 percent of annual income, up to 200 per year, into Personal Unemployment Accounts (PUAs). These contributions would be matched by the federal government and could be withdrawn later to cushion severe income losses or to finance training or job research"--P. 2.
