Modernizing Unemployment Insurance: A Bipartisan Roadmap

Unemployment Insurance (UI) is a critical part of America's social insurance fabric—and an essential part of the nation's economic toolkit. In addition to providing countercyclical support during economic downturns, it helps people who have lost work through no fault of their own to maintain attachment to the workforce, prevent wage erosion, and help them pay bills, when forces out of their control limit their income.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed major cracks in America's UI system, including massive technology failures, a core administrative structure ill-equipped to pay benefits on time and to the right people, and a base set of laws and assumptions that varied widely in benefit amount, duration, and access.

The National Academy of Social Insurance’s UI Task Force, first convened in December 2020, has spent the past several years looking at lessons learned from the pandemic; solutions proposed over the past few decades; and the vast knowledge base and range of its diverse Members’ views. Now, we are excited to release the Task Force's report, to help policymakers, the media, and the public understand what policy levers exist, how they work, and what the trade-offs are for each one.

Speakers include:

Michele Evermore, Task Force Principal Investigator and Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation

Julia Simon-Mishel, Task Force Co-chair and Supervising Attorney, Philadelphia Legal Assistance

Andy Stettner, Director of UI Modernization, Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration

Till von Wachter, Task Force Co-chair and Professor of Economics, University of California Los Angeles

Matt Weidinger, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Indivar Dutta-Gupta, former Executive Director of the Center for Law and Social Policy