Unemployment Insurance in the Early 21st Century

“This essay was an American response to three European papers on European UI [Unemployment Insurance] systems … The paper proceeded in five sections. Consistent with its role as an American response, the first section provided a brief overview of the American UI system and its recent evolution. Drawing heavily on the European papers presented at the conference, the second and third sections presented brief high-level reviews of the voluminous literatures on the economic theory of the effects of UI programs and the empirical evidence on those effects. The fourth section described the current U.S. macroeconomic environment and recent changes in UI policy. The final section attempted to identify some lessons for the U.S. of the European experience and the papers presented in this session” (p. i). (Abstractor: Author)

"[The authors conclude with] several promising and complementary strategies [for the UI system]: • Broadened definition of a ‘suitable job’ and a requirement to accept suitable job offers. Failure to accept such a job offer results in termination of the UI benefit. • Mandatory maintenance of a job search log with some level of employer job contacts and job offers received. Failure to keep the log and to show the required level of job search would result in termination of the UI benefit. Here, some form of auditing of claims would probably be appropriate. • Mandatory participation in low intensity job search assistance: perhaps a several day job search assistance seminar, followed by meetings of increasing frequency with a job search counselor. Here again, failure to participate in the program would result in termination of the benefit” (p.9). (Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2013
• Author(s): Klerman, Jacob Alex
• Organizational Author(s): Abt Associates
• Funding Source: Abt Associates
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies