Permanent Job Loss and the U.S. System of Financing Unemployment Insurance

The authors reexamine the experience rating provisions in the U.S. UI system and look at its effects on both temporary layoffs and long-term permanent layoffs. For temporary layoffs, they propose a higher degree of experience rating through a restructuring of the tax code while eliminating administrative time lags between the payment of benefits and the resulting changes in taxes. Brechling and Laurence also propose experience rating as an effective means of internalizing the costs of the growing number of permanent layoffs, making the case that payroll taxes are not the ideal means of implementing experience rating in this situation. In addition, they compare how the reserve and benefit ratio methods of experience rating internalize the costs of permanent layoffs.