A Safety Net … or a Trap?

Express Employment Professionals recently released a white paper exploring government benefit programs and their impact on employment.

The paper seeks to answer four pressing questions:

  1. Are people abusing the disability insurance program?
  2. Are unemployment benefits prolonging unemployment?
  3. Are welfare benefits creating a “low-wage trap?”
  4. Have other programs become inefficient and counterproductive?

These questions have taken on new urgency as government budgets tighten and as the nation’s labor force participation rate (LFPR) has remained too low for too long, even after the economic recovery began in 2009. The LFPR is at lows not seen since the Carter presidency. Is it possible that programs designed to fix these problems are actually making them worse?

A Safety Net or a Trap” draws on a wide range of research, raw data, and commissioned surveys from Express to address this issue and offer recommendations for policymakers.

“Getting people back to work should be our number one goal in America,” said Bob Funk, CEO of Express, and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. “When there are concerns about whether our social programs are keeping people from working, then we have to ask some serious questions. The safety net has an important role in our society, but it can’t become a trap. Benefit programs must serve as a ladder for upward mobility.”

“Express believes it should be a national priority to eliminate barriers that come between people and the jobs they want or need. So it’s time to ensure our government benefit programs do what they should do: help people so they can get back to work.”

Download the white paper:
A Safety Net … Or A Trap

For more information about the state of employment – and unemployment – in America today, visit ExpressPros.com/AmericaEmployed.

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