Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Sharron Angle advocates halting unemployment benefits to force jobless to seek work

In her much anticipated emergence into the mainstream media last night, Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle tried somewhat to soften her previous comments that implied jobless workers were spoiled by unemployment benefits.

She said she doesn’t think the workers are spoiled, but that the country’s system of entitlements have “spoiled our citizenry” and caused a “spoilage” in our ability to return the jobless to the workforce, she told Jon Ralston on Face to Face.

While she advocated eliminating the extension of unemployment benefits, she also advocated for creating a tiered system that would supplement wages for those who took entry level jobs that paid less than their unemployment benefit.

Seems, however, that Nevada already does that.

According to the state’s unemployment website, workers who earn less than their unemployment benefit still receive money from the state. Their unemployment checks are reduced by 75 percent of the amount they earned at the lower-paying job.

Thus, workers who accept entry-level jobs—those jobs that Angle maintained still exist in the Nevada economy despite its 14 percent unemployment rate—will earn more if they are working than if they just accept unemployment.

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