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stopbush

(24,396 posts)
Thu Mar 13, 2014, 01:13 PM Mar 2014

Minimum Wage of $10.10 p/h And Unemployment Benefits

It strikes me that a minimum wage worker making $10.10 an hour grosses $404 a week.

Were that person to lose their job and go on unemployment benefits, they would receive 50% of that gross pay as their weekly benefit, ie: $202 per week.

The top weekly unemployment benefit in CA is $450 a week (it's considerably lower in other states). That's your benefit whether you were earning $900 a week at your last job or $10,000 a week at your last job...which means that your weekly benefit is only $46 a week more than what you'd make working a full-time minimum wage job @ $10.10 an hour.

Doesn't it seem that we need to be addressing unemployment benefit levels as well? Shouldn't the weekly benefit in a high COL state like CA be more like $550-600 a week?

If you're a Republican, surely you can see that it's hardly worth the effort of those "lazy unemployeds" to receive a benefit that's just above minimum wage. How does one live the Republican-called Life of Riley on such a low benefit?

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