The extra $600 Americans receive in weekly unemployment benefits ends in July — how that could cost the U.S. more jobs

For every dollar spent on unemployment insurance, there’s a multiplier effect leading to a 1.64 increase in GDP, research shows

Two-thirds of Americans are receiving more money from unemployment benefits than they did from their jobs, largely because of a supplemental $600 weekly benefit that’s part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act. 

But decreasing those benefits could cost the country even more jobs on top of the historic 20 million jobs that have already been wiped away by the coronavirus pandemic, Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank based in Washington, D.C., said. 

If the extra $600 unemployment benefit expires, millions of Americans will have less money to spend in stores, and that could ultimately lead to more unemployment.— Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute

The weekly supplemental $600 benefit is set to expire at the end of July if the U.S. Senate and President Donald Trump don’t pass the $3 trillion HEROES Act stimulus package, which would extend the $600 weekly add-on unemployment benefit into January 2021.