By Chitown Kev

Excerpt:

Contrary to Republican claims that more COVID-19 relief aid is an incentive for Americans not to work, Annie Lowrey reports for The Atlantic that even before the age of COVID-19, a sizable number of working Americans wanted more work because they are underemployed.

Not only are 18 million Americans unemployed; millions more are now underemployed, their lost hours translating into lost wages translating into lost consumer spending, while emergency unemployment-insurance payments expire, eviction moratoriums lapse, and Congress remains deadlocked.

A new analysis from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), an anti-poverty research and advocacy group, suggests that underemployment was far more common than government statistics indicated even before the pandemic recession hit. A kitchen-table economic crisis was hiding in plain sight. Now the pandemic threatens to make the situation far worse.

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