Donald Trump’s administration is threatening to withdraw federal funding for unemployment assistance in all 50 states as part of the president’s nationwide campaign against ā€œfraudā€ in government spending.

In a letter to the governors of 53 states and territories, acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling warned that the federal government would use ā€œevery available toolā€ to combat ā€œwaste, fraud and abuseā€ within state-run unemployment insurance programs, including ā€œwithholding administrative funds from statesā€ for the first time in history.

There is no single national program for unemployment support, though the federal government partners with state agencies to support temporary financial assistance to out-of-work Americans. Nearly 2 million people are currently receiving those benefits, while roughly 229,000 people are filing initial jobless claims every week, according to the Labor Department.

  • TheFogan@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    Ā·
    1 month ago

    Interesting, but yeah I guess that still counts in the sense that still it’s pushing say, software engineers that lost their jobs to AI, to absolutely have to take a minimum wage job to, possibly afford enough food to survive while getting evicted/foreclosed etc…

    No matter how you slice it, it still does put more people… into a rush to get SOME form of employment. even at the cost of their time that they could be using to get… actually livable employment.

      • TheFogan@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        Ā·
        1 month ago

        There’s a republican solution for that as well… ā€œlower/eliminate minimum wage so corporations can hire people to do things that are less usefulā€. Think of it, we can pay people $2 an hour to have them stand in a park and tell people they should eat at mcdonalds, normally the conversion rate is too low, but at $2 an hour, if they can get one person to go every 2 hours, it’s still profitable.

        (and yes obviously this is horribly terrifyingly stupid… and honestly not that far from what many horrible politicians have pushed for).