Final Report Issued by the National Academy of Social Insurance Unemployment Insurance Task Force

/EIN News/ -- Washington, July 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The National Academy of Social Insurance has released a groundbreaking bipartisan report on Unemployment Insurance (UI) modernization, following several years of deliberations by its Unemployment Insurance Task Force.  On Wednesday, July 17th, at 12:30 pm ET, the Academy will host a virtual event, featuring a distinguished panel of experts, discussing the Task Force’s final report.

“Unemployment Insurance (UI) is a critical part of America's social insurance fabric—and an essential part of the nation's economic toolkit,” said Michele Evermore, the Task Force’s Principal Investigator and one of the nation’s foremost UI experts. “Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed major cracks in America's UI system that it’s critical for policymakers to acknowledge and address so that we are prepared for future economic downturns.”

The Task Force, comprised of 24 leading UI experts from across the political spectrum, began its work in late 2020 in the midst of the chaos that the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked on our nation’s Unemployment Insurance system to find solutions to build a more stable system that would not be susceptible to the myriad failures experienced during the pandemic. The purpose of this Task Force was to review and analyze issues that the UI system has faced both historically and during the pandemic, as well as potential policy solutions, how those solutions might work, and might be perceived. 

“Despite historic levels of political polarization in the U.S., it is encouraging to see such a diverse group of UI experts find so much common ground on this critical issue,” said Academy CEO Rebecca Vallas.  

The most critical area of agreement is that the federal-state UI system was flawed before the pandemic and that the stress of paying historic levels of claims under both regular and huge new programs strained UI systems to the point of breaking. While the economy is currently healthy, policymakers and states have an opportunity to take steps now to prepare for the next downturn, or the UI system might not be able to adequately and efficiently perform the critical countercyclical stabilization that it has done for nearly nine decades.

The Academy’s virtual event will be moderated by the Task Force’s Principal Investigator, Michele Evermore, with a panel featuring: Task Force Co-Chairs Till Von Wachter, California Policy Lab, University of California, Los Angeles; Julia Simon-Mishel, Philadelphia Legal Assistance; Matt Weidinger, American Enterprise Institute, and Task Force member; and Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Member of the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance. The event will also feature remarks from Andrew Stettner, Director of UI Modernization at the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. 

The panel will discuss the report’s key findings, including lessons learned from the pandemic from the perspectives of claimants, employers, and government systems---as well as policy options identified by the Task Force, ranging from upgrading outdated technology and administrative systems to policy questions about funding, financing, eligibility and replacement of lost wages.

As bipartisan legislation has been recently introduced in the U.S. Senate, and the House Committee on Ways and Means has recently held hearings to find common ground on how to fix these systems, the Task Force’s report will provide timely context and insights to Congress and state policymakers, as they consider ways to improve the nation’s UI system to better prepare for future economic downturns.

Click here to read the Task Force’s report.

Click here to RSVP for the event.

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The National Academy of Social Insurance is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization made up of the nation’s leading experts on social insurance. Its mission is to advance solutions to challenges facing the nation by increasing public understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security.

Tom Novotny
                    National Academy of Social Insurance
                    202-243-7281
                    tnovotny@nasi.org