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Local officials who want to extend enhanced unemployment benefits can do so, the White House said yesterday, a day after the administration and U.S. Congress allowed a program to lapse which had boosted payments during the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. Programs providing up to $300 extra a week to millions of people who lost their jobs during the pandemic ended on Monday as the U.S. celebrated Labor Day. Benefits were also available for people who normally do not qualify for state unemployment money, with checks going to those without jobs for an extended period of time and to "gig workers" who perform on-demand services, including as drivers, delivering groceries or providing childcare. Those people will be cut off entirely. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that there are other options available for states to extend benefits to people in need. The funding for extra jobless benefits had been provided as an economic stimulus measure in a series of bills following the COVID-19 pandemic, including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March by Biden and his fellow Democrats. The administration never pushed for a nationwide extension. Psaki said the White House would "continue to work with states where you're living to help them implement programs, including the distribution of the American Rescue Plan funding, so that you can get the assistance you need." Republicans opposed the benefits, saying that they would discourage work at a time when a record 10.1 million job openings were available, as of the end of June. Many governors cut off the extra payments in their states. Still, there was little direct evidence the payments were the primary factor pushing people out of the labor force.

A U.S. House of Representatives committee this week will attempt to advance sweeping legislation to expand healthcare benefits for the elderly and other social services as part of Democrats' $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan, Reuters reported. The House Ways and Means Committee plans to debate a wide-ranging measure on Thursday and Friday. The package is expected to draw lock-step opposition from Republicans, and also faces uncertain support from Democrats with key Senate moderate Joe Manchin objecting to its large size. "Later this week, the Ways and Means Committee will put an end to the idea that only some workers are worthy of ‘perks’ like paid leave, child care, and assistance in saving for retirement, and finally commit to investments that make these supports fixtures of the American workplace," committee Chairman Richard Neal said in a statement. But already there was talk of reducing the $3.5 trillion price of the legislation. Passage in the Senate will require the support of all 50 Democrats, who aim to use a maneuver called "reconciliation," which would allow them to pass the legislation by a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes needed for most bills in the 100-member chamber.

Expanded unemployment benefits that have kept millions of Americans afloat during the pandemic expired yesterday, setting up an abrupt cutoff of assistance to 7.5 million people as the Delta variant rattles the pandemic recovery, the New York Times reported. The end of the aid came without objection from President Biden and his top economic advisers, who have become caught in a political fight over the benefits and are now banking on other federal help and an autumn pickup in hiring to keep vulnerable families from foreclosure and food lines. The $1.9 trillion economic aid package Biden signed in March included extended and expanded benefits for unemployed workers, like a $300-per-week federal supplement to state jobless payments, additional weeks of assistance for the long-term unemployed and the extension of a special program to provide benefits to so-called gig workers who traditionally do not qualify for unemployment benefits. The expiration date reached yesterday means that 7.5 million people will lose their benefits entirely and another three million will lose the $300 weekly supplement. Republicans and small business owners have assailed efforts to extend the aid, contending that it has held back the economic recovery and fueled a labor shortage by discouraging people from looking for work. Liberal Democrats and progressive groups have pushed for another round of aid, saying millions of Americans remain vulnerable and in need of help. The president’s most senior economic advisers say the economy is in the process of completing a hand off between federal assistance and the labor market. As support from the March stimulus law wanes, they say, more and more Americans are set to return to work, drawing paychecks that will power consumer spending in the place of government aid. And Mr. Biden is pushing Congress this month to pass two measures that constitute a multi-trillion-dollar agenda focused on longer-run economic growth: a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a larger, partisan spending bill with investments in child care, education, carbon reduction and more. That push leaves no political oxygen for an additional short-term aid bill, which White House officials insist the economy does not need.

In the nearly 18 months since the pandemic first forced companies to send their employees to work from home, the date companies have planned to bring workers back to offices has changed again and again, the New York Times reported. First it was January, a full year after the coronavirus first surfaced in China. January slipped to July, as tens of millions of people lined up across America to be vaccinated. But then the surge of vaccinations peaked, and the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus drove another spike in cases. For many companies, September became the new July. Now September is out as an option, and it’s anybody’s guess when workers will return to their offices in large numbers. Companies have new variables to consider, including mask mandates that have been dropped and ordered back; evidence that the effectiveness of vaccines, while still strong, may be waning; booster shots; and burned-out workers who are vaccinated at varying rates. There are also the differing infection rates across the country and a shifting power dynamic between employers and employees. In addition to Uber, companies including Google, Amazon, Apple and Starbucks have said they will postpone their return dates to next year. Executives say their rationale for the long delay is twofold: In addition to wanting to keep employees out of harm’s way, they are seeking an end to the roller coaster of anticipated return dates and further delays. The fits and starts make it difficult for employees to plan, and the hope is that a far-off return date will not need to be adjusted yet again.

A record share of U.S. small-business owners said they had vacant positions in August, and an unprecedented number boosted wages to lure workers, the National Federation of Independent Business said yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. Fifty percent of firms had job openings they could not fill last month, up 1 percentage point from July and the largest share in monthly data back to 1986, according to the NFIB data. A record 41% of small-business owners said they raised compensation. “Owners are raising compensation in an attempt to attract workers and these costs are being passed on to consumers through price hikes for goods and services, creating inflation pressures,” Bill Dunkelberg, NFIB’s chief economist, said in a statement. A record 32% of small businesses said they intend to add to payrolls in the next few months, while the number planning to raise worker pay remained near a series high. Job skills remain problematic for companies, with 91% of those hiring or trying to hire indicating there were few or no qualified applicants for open positions, the report showed.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is demanding a “strategic pause” in action on President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, potentially imperiling the $3.5 trillion tax and spending package that Democratic leaders plan to push through Congress this fall, Bloomberg News reported. Manchin said that rising inflation and a soaring national debt necessitate a go-slow approach and a “significantly” smaller plan than the one Democratic leaders and the White House have endorsed. “By placing a strategic pause on this budgetary proposal, by significantly reducing the size of any possible reconciliation bill to only what America can afford and needs to spend, we can and will build a better and stronger nation for all our families,” Manchin said in the op-ed. In comments Wednesday at an event hosted by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the moderate Democrat said his party should “hit the pause button.” Lawmakers, he said, have too many other pressing issues before them, including heightening national security concerns after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

More than half of U.S. companies are planning to impose COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace by year end, with almost a quarter considering vaccination as a condition for employment, according to a national survey of nearly 1,000 employers, Reuters reported. In the face of a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, spurred by the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant, that has strained the U.S. health care system, many companies have come out with mask mandates and changed their vaccination policies. Google's parent Alphabet Inc., Walmart Inc., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are among the growing list of employers requiring some or all staff to get the vaccine. The survey, which polled 961 U.S. companies that together employ around 9.7 million people, found that by the fourth quarter of 2021, over 52% of employers could have one or more vaccine mandate requirements, an increase from 21% currently. The mandates could range from requiring vaccination for staff to access common areas such as cafeterias to requiring vaccination for all employees, according to the survey conducted by Willis Towers Watson between Aug. 18 and 25.

States that ended enhanced federal unemployment benefits early have so far seen about the same job growth as states that continued offering the pandemic-related extra aid, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis and economists. Several rounds of federal pandemic aid boosted the amount of unemployment payments, most recently by $300 a week, and extended them for as long as 18 months. The extra benefits are set to expire nationwide next week. But 25 states ended the financial enhancement over the summer, and most of them also moved to end other pandemic-specific unemployment programs such as benefits for gig and self-employed workers. Nonfarm payrolls rose 1.33% in July from April in the 25 states that ended the benefits and 1.37% in the other 25 states and the District of Columbia, the Journal analysis of Labor Department data showed. The payroll figures are taken from a government survey of employers. The analysis compared July totals with April, before governors in May started announcing plans to end or reduce the benefits during the summer. Economists who have conducted their own analyses of the government data say the rates of job growth in states that ended and states that maintained the benefits are, from a statistical perspective, about the same. “If the question is, ‘Is UI the key thing that’s holding back the labor market recovery?’ The answer is no, definitely not, based on the available data,” said Peter Ganong, a University of Chicago economist, referring to unemployment insurance. Economists caution against concluding from these results that expiring benefits had no effect on employment. First, they say it might be too early to detect such an effect. Second, offsetting effects from state reopenings and virus-related restrictions by local governments could be masking the impact of the expiring benefits.