13.8 Million Americans Still on Unemployment Benefits
- Author: Kelly Cooke
- Posted: 2025-06-10
2020 was a very rough year for the working American, as at one point over 30 million Americans were unemployed due to around 80% of all small businesses closing down due to government measures to curb the pandemic. As of mid-July 2021, there are still about 16 million Americans unemployed and around 13.8 people currently drawing unemployment benefits. All politics aside, most economists agree that this is in no way sustainable.
Where economists disagree is with the trajectory of the future. According to last month's jobs report, around 850,000 Americans got jobs, and so some are excited to see this trending up. However, almost all of these jobs were existing jobs, not new jobs. New jobs created is what a nation in recovery would like to see. Then again, this current administration is a bit different with their economic principles, to say the least. For example, the Biden Administration's official stance is that inflation and products costing more money, needing more money to live, is a good thing because it's a sign of a healthy economy. The media join in and promote this, and one becomes an enemy for disagreeing.
Though the facts are impossible to deny. Most of those 850,000 jobs are from businesses being allowed to open up again. Businesses and jobs that already existed, yet were closed down entirely in states like California, New York, etc, but kept barely alive due to grant spending. Once these jobs opened back up, people jumped to fill them. However, the second issue here is that the people filling these jobs are now mostly teenagers.
Teenagers are too young to draw unemployed, and by and large they don't have to pay their own bills. So, what we're seeing here is a big trend of teenagers grabbing jobs for relatively low wages to have some spending money over the summer. These jobs haven't been available to teenagers in many years. It's only due to the fact that adults are refusing to work in droves that these jobs are even open for teens.
Still and all, the media is currently making a pretty big deal out of last month's job report, claiming that it's actually a good thing that 13.8 million Americans are on unemployment benefits. It's not as if the media is telling people all of the facts, of course. For instance, they entirely omit the fact that these jobs are mostly entry-level, minimum wage jobs being grabbed up by teenagers. They have pushed the 850,000 number to promote Biden's presidency, as is to be expected, and they're leaving out the fact that this might be entirely unsustainable come the fall, when teenagers head back to school. Though for what the future holds, we all have to wait and see.
2021 Will Tell the Tale
Political sides are fighting back and forth now on what's causing unemployment numbers to stay so high. Half the people are arguing that it's not the government's free money but rather low wages and poor working conditions that are keeping people from going back to work. The other side is arguing that if only you took that money away, and with jobs remaining unfilled in the nation, people will go in to fill them up out of necessity. Which side is right? Well, all we know for sure is that the federal unemployment supplement is set to expire in September. While many believe Biden will renew it for another six months to a year, that is not a guarantee.
If the federal supplement ends in all 50 states, this means that people will only be drawing unemployment on a state level, which means that they're making an average of $300 per week, not $600, and this, some claim, will urge people back to work.
It is amazing that America has nearly 14 million people filing for unemployment when there are roughly 8 million jobs vacant around the nation. Left or right, Republican or Democrat, the fact is that the global pandemic really threw America's economy out of whack.
The jobs reports aren't bad, with around 800,000 added last month. However, as previously stated, a lot of these jobs are either teens working summer jobs or people being allowed to open their businesses back up, so it's not as if this current administration is working wonders on the economy. We'll all just have to wait and see the consequences once the federal supplement is gone.