More than 60 percent of all new jobs in 2014 were created because Congress ended a federal unemployment benefits program, a new report finds.
The 2009 stimulus extended unemployment benefits by more than a year for some workers, by giving workers who had used up state unemployment benefits access to federal money. When Congress ended the program in December 2013, millions of unemployed people abruptly lost their benefits.
The cut-off led to the creation of 1.8 million jobs in 2014, according to new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research. And almost one million of those jobs were filled by workers who would still be receiving federal unemployment checks if the money was still available.
The House Ways and Means Committee touted the findings in a press release Monday, saying Republicans rightly understood that the program was stifling the economy.
Congress opted not to extend the benefits in December, 2013, and the Republican House blocked a Senate an attempt in March to extend the benefits. Democrats strongly objected.
“These families are in danger of losing their homes,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in March, referring to two million people whose benefits had been cut. “And why? Because of the extreme nature, the indifference, of the Republicans in the House, to the needs of the American people.”
The authors of the paper, Marcus Hagedorn, Iourii Manovskii and Kurt Pitman, refer to the boost in growth following the benefits cut as a potential “2014 Employment Miracle.”
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