Unemployment Insurance (UI) has played a key role both in helping workers replace lost income and acting as a macroeconomic stabilizer since it was introduced during the Great Depression. In spite of decades of neglect, the program has repeatedly saved jobs and kept working Americans and their families out of poverty when they’ve lost a job through no fault of their own.

Despite the breadth of empirical evidence of the economy-wide benefits of UI, detractors have made unfounded claims for decades about the program to undermine its reputation and build political support to aggressively defund it. Unfounded partisan complaints regarding UI appear in congressional testimony, public statements, op-eds and actual policymaking. Versions of these statements and actions, which predictably occur every time the program is working as designed—providing financial support to working families during economic downturns and stabilizing the overall economy—have been called political and philosophical by nonpartisan analysts.  Partisan talking points attacking UI are consistently not grounded in evidence, but rather harmful anecdotes that purposefully paint a misleading picture of UI in order to undermine popular support for this vital program.

Read the issue brief here.