Building a National Unemployment Insurance System | Corporation for a Skilled Workforce

Building a National Unemployment Insurance System is the latest of a series of papers recommending systemic improvements to modernize the United States’ outdated patchwork of workforce policies, all being issued by the Better Employment and Training Strategies (BETS) taskforce. BETS is a coalition of more than 40 leading practitioners and researchers that has come together to develop these recommendations.

Corporation for a Skilled Workforce has been deeply involved with the BETS taskforce; President & CEO Larry Good, Senior Fellow Jeannine LaPrad, Board Chair Christopher King, and Board Members Todd Greene and Martin Simon are all taskforce members. “The start of the Biden-Harris Administration offers an important opportunity to rethink U.S. workforce policy and funding. The recommendations in this series would greatly increase economic mobility and opportunity, aligning closely with CSW’s mission and work,” said Good.

King, a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Texas-Austin and former director of the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources there, co-authored this piece with Stephen A. Wandner, a Senior Fellow with the National Academy of Social Insurance, building from ideas developed in a BETS workgroup. This paper lays out the case for reframing Unemployment Insurance as a national system, building one new, strong and more consistent system rather than attempting to repair 53 state systems that cover only a small proportion of those out of work and, in many cases, have been challenging to administer, as typified by experiences during the pandemic.

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