Any full time worker out of work has been getting 350 a week since back in March. Part timers were cut to 200 a week a while back because for the first few months anyone unemployed got 350 a week. 350 a week is about minimum wage after tax for a full week work.
Also there's been a couple of wage subsidy schemes where companies who had substantial loss of earnings could get assistance paying salaries.
Was the US paying 600 a month or a week. You and tstorm said different things.
Obviously 600 a week is better than 350 a week but 600 a month is considerably worse.
Good catch, I missed that in Tippy's response. It was weekly. $600 per week, so roughly $2400-$3000 a month, give or take, of federal unemployment on top of whatever states were paying in unemployement, which is typically salary dependent, for the first 4 months or so of the pandemic. That was later backed down to $300 a week on top of state unemployment, which I thought had just ended, but in preparing my argument for Agema, my state's website seems to suggest there's $300 a week in federal money still coming until March 31st, 2021.
And then on top of that, there was a $1200 direct payment for 90% of adults, $700 for each dependent minor, another $600 payment, a proposed $1400 payment. Your wage subsidy program? Ours was $669 billion dollars.
Are they?
The USA ranks highly on specific covid-19 funding.
However, to contrast that, most countries have automatic systems that click into place with income disruption, often called "automatic stabilisers". Basic unemployment benefits, etc. The USA traditionally has very weak benefits packages, far lower than other Western countries in terms of % median household income. So how generous the USA is really being cannot be evaluated without consideration of these basic support systems. In many cases, of course, the modest specific covid-19 support from countries like France and Germany reflects the fact that their basic automatic support systems already look after the population to such a degree that they don't need much specific covid-19 top-up.
And finally, let's also bear in mind that by splashing out money more indisciminately as the USA has, a substantial amount is frittered away on people who don't need it.
The US federally has a weak benefits package because we have state and federal systems. In Pennsylvania, my unemployment would cover roughly half my full-time pay, up to nearly $600 a week. What do you have over there? Google tells me "jobseekers alloweance" is like £75 a week in the UK when I try and find what the equivalent is, and I'm just gonna ask you about it because I can't believe that's seriously a thing. Cause that's a low number.