Expiring unemployment benefits will boost job growth by over 150,000 in July and over 400,000 in September, Goldman says

Expiring unemployment benefits will boost job growth by over 150,000 in July and over 400,000 in September, Goldman says

Following an April that fell significantly short of expectations, 25 GOP-led states announced they would be unemployment benefits early to incentivize people to get back to work. Both Bank of America and Goldman Sachs partially agreed that doing so will ease the labor shortage, with Goldman projecting a resultant spur to hiring in the coming months. Goldman's Joseph Briggs wrote in a Friday that the 25 states opting out of President Joe Biden's $300 weekly unemployment benefits will boost job growth by 150,000 in July and over 400,000 in September. Briggs cautioned that these job gains estimates are "highly uncertain" and "the peak monthly growth impact could exceed 800k if workers are as sensitive to generous benefits as prior academic studies estimate, or be as low as 100k if benefit reductions only modestly increase workers' willingness to return to work." Briggs noted that the states ending the benefits early account for only 29% of total outstanding job losses since the start of the pandemic, partly because those states imposed fewer economic restrictions during the past year, and the majority of outstanding job losses are in the states that haven't changed reemployment incentives. Given that the majority of job losses are