Where are the workers? Cutoff of jobless aid spurs no influx

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Earlier this year, an insistent cry arose from business leaders and some governors: cut off a $300-a-week federal supplement for unemployed Americans. Many people, they argued, would then come off the sidelines and take the millions of jobs that employers were desperate to fill.

Yet three months after half the states began ending that federal payment, there’s been no significant influx of job seekers.

In states that cut off the $300 check, the workforce — the number of people who either have a job or are looking for one — has risen no more than it has in the states that maintained the payment.