Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless
&gt; When she got her unemployment benefits, she realized something unheard of: She was making more money not working.<p>The temporary COVID unemployment bill was so rushed that they didn’t index the unemployment to the person’s earnings. If you lost your job or had your hours reduced, you get an extra $600&#x2F;week on top of state unemployment. About half of people receiving this are receiving more from the combined unemployment measures than they did from their jobs.<p>This is was a necessary compromise to get the relief enacted as quickly as possible. We didn’t have an easy way to implement a more complex unemployment system at a national level, so we compromised with a flat rate for everyone.  Unfortunately, many people are misinterpreting this and assuming that unemployment is always this lucrative (it’s not, and the $600&#x2F;week ends after July) or assuming that our government has enough money lying around to pay everyone this much all of the time (we don’t, this is actually very expensive for the taxpayers).