The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling for Washington to immediately stop paying out-of-work Americans an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits, saying the boost in government aid is giving some recipients less incentive to look for work.
The business group said Friday that the supplemental unemployment benefit, part of the Biden administration’s efforts to support the pandemic-ravaged economy, results in about one in four recipients taking home more in unemployment pay than they earned when they were working.
The statement follows the release of surprisingly weak jobs data for April. On Friday, the Labor Department said U.S. employers added just 266,000 jobs last month, a big drop from March and well below the nearly 1 million jobs