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For years, employers had access to a labor force where workers were so desperate that they’d take any job offer. The combination of poverty-level minimum wages, historically low unionization rates, at-will employment, worker misclassification, a battered safety net, a lack of paid time off or employer-sponsored benefits, and a host of other policies and practices have firmly tilted the scales toward employers, allowing for pervasive exploitation and abuse, particularly for the nearly 3 in 4 Americans living paycheck to paycheck even before the pandemic.

The situation is more dire after a job loss. Recently laid-off workers are likely to have almost no safety cushion — more than half of consumers had $3,000 or less in their checking and savings accounts combined in 2019. They may also have no access to unemployment benefits — just 28 percent of eligible unemployed workers in 2019 actually received benefits. That makes workers desperate for any job, no matter how terrible, that can help them scrape by. During a recession with mass layoffs, when millions are facing that same desperation, businesses have all the power to offer unsafe jobs in places like crowded meatpacking plants and bustling restaurant kitchens to overqualified applicants with meager compensation, unless the government intervenes.

Unemployment insurance, especially the enhanced benefits during the pandemic, gives workers breathing room. The benefits aren’t enough for people to live large — even with the extra $300 a week, unemployment benefits will fall noticeably short for a modest family budget in every county in the country. Benefits just let workers be slightly less desperate, alleviating the pressure to take unsafe jobs — many of which are especially dangerous during a pandemic — that pay poverty wages. Instead, they can hold out a bit longer for better-paying jobs that match their skills, education, experience, and interests.

One dishwasher, Jeremy, told journalist Eion Higgins that “the stimulus and unemployment benefits have definitely helped me be more picky about what jobs I’ll take since I don’t have to take anything I can get in order to cover rent and groceries.” Another, Alan, reported that “I have a degree in forestry and since I’m currently relatively financially secure I can take more time to find a job in the field that I actually want to work in.” A third, Owen, said “I left because having some time off to think and plan helped focus my desire to be paid better and treated better… I expect to make at least double and finally have nights and weekends off. Hopefully I’ll be treated with a little more dignity but I know that’s not always the case.”

This is very different than saying unemployment benefits are discouraging work in general. Studies of unemployment insurance have shown that laid-off workers who receive benefits search harder for jobs, receive better paying offers, and take roles that better match their education level. Specifically during the pandemic, several studies have looked at the $600 enhanced benefits and found that they had little to no effect on employment or job search. It’s hard to see how the current $300 boost would be any different.

Despite what many businesses, commentators, and lawmakers are trying to claim, the data is continuing to prove that unemployment insurance isn’t standing in the way of hiring. Though overall job growth in April was disappointing, the leisure and hospitality sector — where most of the cries of labor shortage from employers are coming from — actually accelerated job growth with 206,000 new hires in March and 366,000 in April. In total, 430,000 people joined the labor force (meaning they weren’t searching for work before but now are), but that growth came entirely from men while women actually left the labor force on net in April, suggesting that this has more to do with a continued lack of child care. States with higher unemployment benefit levels, as well as low-wage sectors where benefits are more often higher than previous income, have actually seen faster job growth, indicating that unemployment insurance isn’t the cause of slow hiring.

In reality, few workers even had access to unemployment insurance in the first place. From April 2020 to January 2021, only 18 percent of unemployed people had received unemployment benefits in the last two weeks at any one time. It’s been even worse for Black (13 percent) and Asian (11 percent) workers and those without a college degree (12 percent), all of whom are overrepresented in low-wage industries like leisure and hospitality. Undocumented immigrants are also totally excluded from unemployment insurance, yet they are 10 percent of restaurant workers nationwide and almost 40 percent in cities like New York and Los Angeles. We saw the consequences of this early in the pandemic when meatpacking plants convinced the government to declare them essential, allowing them to call their employees back into work and leading to large COVID outbreaks among their workforces, disproportionately made up of immigrants and people of color, and in communities where the plants are located.

Even so, employers have managed to complain loudly enough about the possibility that they may have lost a hint of power that sympathetic legislators are rushing to accommodate them. As of mid-May, in 16 states and counting, Republican governors had announced their plans to block all of their residents from receiving their rightful federal unemployment benefits, citing anecdotes of businesses struggling to hire at their current wages as justification. Ending those benefits before the jobs are there and while millions are still losing their jobs each month will take billions of dollars — over $10 billion from almost 2 million unemployed workers by one estimate — out of the economy in those states, even if some of those people cut off find work, and will effectively slow the recovery through decreased spending.

If there was a labor shortage, employers have common sense options to make themselves more competitive: They could raise wages to livable levels, as many businesses have found success doing, or pressure their lawmaker friends to support vaccination efforts and fund safe and affordable child care. Instead, some businesses are relying on half measures, such as offering one-time signing bonuses specifically because they know those are insignificant when compared to what a worker would earn long-term from permanently higher wages. Many others are simply pushing the same narrative they have fallen back on for more than a century — through the New Deal, the Great Society, welfare reform, and the Great Recession — by claiming workers who dare demand more are lazy and ungrateful. It’s not a coincidence that the same people shouting to end unemployment benefits now are also opposing the Raise the Wage Act, the PRO Act, and other measures that might materially improve the lives and build the power of workers.

This power struggle has made its way to the president’s desk. In a White House speech on Monday, President Biden said, “Anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.” (Emphasis added.) Now the government has to decide who gets to define “suitable.” Businesses would like it to mean the pre-COVID status quo: low wages, inconsistent hours, minimal (if any) benefits, and limited protections. Workers want it to mean that jobs are safe and offer a decent quality of life — including livable wages, manageable hours, and accommodations for caregiving and quality of life.

The Biden administration has taken some positive steps in defining a good job for federal contractors, setting a $15 minimum wage, raising standards, and strengthening anti-discrimination protections. It’s vital that the administration continue to support all workers in the face of overwhelming employer power. There’s no shortage of ways to do so: They can push to improve the unemployment insurance system through federalization or establishing minimum standards and automatic stabilizers, like those proposed in the Wyden-Bennet reform bill; pass the Raise the Wage Act to raise the minimum wage to $15 and eliminate subminimum wages; implement better regulations and enforcement to prevent wage theft, overtime abuse, misclassification, and OSHA safety violations, among other abuses; pass the PRO Act to ensure workers can exercise their right to come together in unions; and so much more.

We can’t continue to give employers all the power in the labor market. President Biden and other lawmakers must make it clear that now is the time to stand with workers and give them some say in their own working conditions and livelihoods.

Kofi Assabil, a member of the class of 2020 from University of Colorado Boulder, knows the grim job market all too well. Assabil started his job search in January 2020, months prior to his graduation. But when the pandemic reached the United States and everything went remote, he started to worry. “I realized that things were going to be harder. I was going on LinkedIn and Indeed…calling a few connections every two weeks to see if they had any opportunities,” but “even with internships, it was tough.” Along with several of his roommates, Assabil opted to wait out the labor market crunch in graduate school instead.

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The most recent estimates from Georgetown University indicate that approximately 70 percent of college students work part or full-time during their studies, suggesting 30 percent of new grads — up to 1.2 million recent college students — may be ineligible for unemployment once they graduate, unless they have proof of a rescinded job offer.

As a result, this generation of college graduates is struggling to find work. Coupled with a lack of government support and mounting student debt, personal financial conditions are proving difficult for many. According to the most recent data, among the 69 percent of college students that took out loans in 2019, the average debt upon graduation was $29,900, although numbers are higher for students of color. While Congress placed a temporary moratorium on payments for federal loans, there is still $137 billion in outstanding private student loan debt that is unaffected by the moratorium. Those bills are coming due, whether recent grads are ready for them or not. For the 22 percent of college undergraduates who are also parents, the financial burden is only heightened by the need to care for dependents.

The combination of insufficient economic opportunity and inaccessible unemployment benefits could have serious long-term implications. Elaine Weiss, an analyst from the National Academy of Social Insurance, believes that this will push new college graduates into lower paying jobs, since they cannot afford to wait for an offer that provides a higher wage.

According to a UCLA study, individuals who graduate college during a recession can expect between 10 to 20 percent lower lifetime earnings compared with their peers. According to the Federal Reserve, 40.3 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed. Further, this effect has become more amplified over time, as successive graduating classes experience higher and higher post-college unemployment rates.

One potential solution for new grads is a jobseekers’ allowance that could support them while they look for work. The allowance, which could partially replace foregone wages, would allow recipients to support themselves while they continue to look for work. Australia has a similar program dedicated specifically to providing financial assistance to youth and student job seekers with monthly benefit levels ranging from $1,153 to $1,924, depending on financial and family circumstances. While it’s no windfall, a benefit of that size would help cover a large portion of living expenses for many Americans. Other countries, such as Sweden, provide $1,101 per month, while also providing public child care and a child allowance for any families with children under the age of 16.

The results of these stronger unemployment programs have been well documented. One study from Georgetown University found that during the Great Recession, the enhanced unemployment insurance increased workers’ wages by 2.6 percent, with greater benefits for women, people of color, and people with lower educational attainment. This suggests that unemployment insurance programs help facilitate the job search process, allowing workers more time to find a job aligned with their skills.

With another college class soon to graduate into a still-weak labor market, the imperative of stronger unemployment insurance only becomes more important. While the passage of the American Rescue Plan is welcome news for the American economy, the bill failed to include unemployment protections specifically targeted at recent college graduates. The U.S. should take note of the work done by other nations to provide adequate financial stability for recent graduates as they enter the labor market. History tells us that the failure to do so will have lifelong impacts for college graduates.

Take the Great Recession, the economic plunge that followed the 2008 financial crisis. It cost those in the poorest 10 percent of Americans more than 20 percent of their incomes, which was more than twice the drop experienced by the richest 10 percent. It was black and Hispanic workers, as well as workers who didn’t have a college degree, who saw higher rates of unemployment and longer durations without a job than other workers.

Overall, the recession exacerbated already existing inequalities in wealth and income, with black and Hispanic families, as well as women, falling further behind their white, male counterparts in terms of asset building.

And the next recession could be even harder.

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It’s not because that next recession, whenever it arrives, will reach the depth and breadth of the Great Recession. Rather, it’s because federal and state governments have been undermining the programs that protect people when an economic downturn arrives, such as unemployment benefits or nutrition assistance, essentially since the Great Recession ended. This means those programs will be even less effective when they’re next called into action, making the next recession more painful than it would be otherwise.

These concerns are even more important now that there are some flashing red signs that a recession may come sooner than anyone would hope.

To start, nine states have cut the duration of their unemployment benefits systems to below the previously standard 26 weeks, with Florida cutting all the way down to 12. During the recession, when the average length of unemployment approached 40 weeks, more conscientious states extended benefits up to 99 weeks.

While five of the states that have cut unemployment benefits have rules in place to automatically expand benefits if the unemployment rate rises, the other four don’t. And since the conservatives who now control the Senate were against those Great Recession benefits expansions, there’s no guarantee of federal help if states do not act to fix their stingy systems.

Also, having a workable benefits system in place doesn’t necessarily ensure people get the help they need. In 2007, 35 percent of unemployed workers received benefits. Today, barely more than a quarter do due to the imposition of more stringent eligibility requirements. In some states it’s substantially worse: In 2017, for instance, just 10 percent of unemployed workers in North Carolina qualified.

So the main bulwark against poverty when mass unemployment occurs has been whittled down from a standard that even before the recent cuts left America among the least generous countries in the world.

Then there’s nutrition assistance. During the recession, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provided help to nearly 50 million people per month at its peak in December 2012. But the Trump administration — after trying and failing to convince Congress to cut the program — has unilaterally imposed new limits that are going to make it so the program reaches fewer people in the future.

One change, in particular, makes it harder for states to waive certain requirements during periods of high unemployment, which is exactly the time at which eligibility should be expanding.

The Trump administration is also providing waivers to states so that they can add work requirements to Medicaid – to date, six states have had their waivers approved. So when workers lose their jobs, and thus their employer-based health insurance, Medicaid will be that much harder to turn to.

Other steps state governments have taken will also make recession response harder. One of the fundamental problems during an economic downturn is that most states have balanced budget requirements, meaning they have to cut their budgets and suck money out of the economy at the precise moment households are doing the same thing, creating a vicious cycle of economic contraction. Education is a particular favorite for reductions; 12 states still aren’t spending as much on their education system today as they were before the Great Recession.

To deal with that reality, states have rainy day funds they are meant to deploy during rough times to counteract some of that budget slashing. However, about a third of states don’t have the money available in their funds to get through even a moderate downturn. Some of those states, such as Kentucky and Missouri, decided to lower tax rates for their wealthiest earners this year, which didn’t really help bolster those reserves.

Come an economic downturn, the federal government could step in to fill the void states create, just as it did during the Great Recession, providing aid so that states don’t have to, for instance, lay off as many teachers as they would otherwise. But there’s not much reason to believe conservatives in the U.S. Senate would be for that, either. So, an economic problem is going to collide with a political one, creating more pain for more people. (It doesn’t help that Republicans in Congress used $1.5 trillion on a tax cut for the rich and big corporations that had little economic effect, and will embolden those who think additional spending is impossible due to federal deficits and debt.)

Of course, there’s no divining whether a recession is imminent. It may be that the warning signs this time are just a false alarm. But another recession is going to come eventually. And when it does, it’s going to be more painful than necessary, not due to any innate economic condition, but because of choices policymakers made.

Congress has already agreed to allow states to test UI claimants in two specific, narrow circumstances: if a worker was fired from their previous job because of drug use, or if the worker is looking for a new job in a field that regularly drugs tests employees.  But since the Great Recession, some states have been clamoring to expand drug testing for UI applicants—they believe that they’d be able to shrink the program as workers test positive for drugs, or that workers would decline to apply for benefits because of their drug use. Despite the complete absence of data to support this theory, three states—Texas, Mississippi, and Wisconsin—have enacted laws that permit the drug testing of UI recipients (though they have all held implementation until the Labor Department rule was finalized).

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Lawmakers aren’t just hoping to roll back the Labor Department rule. They’re also counting on passage of a bill introduced in the 114^th Congress by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) that would effectively allow states to drug test all jobless workers filing for unemployment insurance.

Here are five reasons that shouldn’t be allowed:

1. It’s unconstitutional

Drug tests have historically been considered searches for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. For searches to be reasonable, they must be based on “individualized suspicion.” That means the government would need to have a specific reason to believe that each person they drug tested was doing drugs. Otherwise, it’s like conducting a search without a warrant.

The only exception to this rule has been if the government can show there is a special need, such as public safety, that warrants it.But governmental programs like Unemployment Insurance, TANF, SNAP, and housing assistance do not naturally evoke the special needs exceptions that the Supreme Court has recognized in the past.

2. It’s redundant

Twenty states already explicitly deny people UI benefits if they lost their job because of drug use or a failed drug test. In addition, virtually all states treat a drug-related discharge as disqualifying misconduct even if it is not explicitly referenced in their discharge statutes. Adding an additional regulation when state regulations are already accomplishing this task would add to the bureaucracy that this administration has vowed to reduce.

3. It’s expensive

Creating a new qualifying requirement for UI would be very expensive, and federal law prohibits states from making potential beneficiaries pay for drug tests. States would have to absorb the cost of drug testing thousands of unemployed workers, and UI programs are already too under-funded and under-staffed. Though there are no comprehensive estimates of how much this would cost, when Texas was considering drug testing UI applicants a few years ago, it was estimated to cost $30 million per year.  In FY 2012, federal funding fell short of covering states’ administrative expenses by an estimated $231 million.

4. Workers have already paid for access to the program

Unemployment Insurance is funded through payroll taxes. Workers earn that benefit over the course of their career—and they don’t have access to it unless they lose their job and are working to find a new one.

5. It’s based on negative stereotypes, not data

This attempt to violate the privacy of every American who is unlucky enough to lose a job is rooted in a blanket assumption that the ranks of the unemployed are crowded with lazy drug abusers. However, there is no evidence to support this claim. When states have attempted similar drug-testing initiatives in the past, only a small fraction of recipients—less than one half of one percent—actually tested positive (and finding that small group of people cost hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Realistically, two-thirds of Americans will struggle with unemployment at some point during their careers. Imposing an expensive, ineffective, and unconstitutional new obstacle to a program that most of us will need doesn’t actually solve anything.

The United States already has an effective program that protects workers from falling into poverty or losing their homes when they are laid-off, by temporarily replacing some of their earnings while they look for a new job. Unemployment Insurance (UI) isn’t exactly a household name, but the program’s benefits have provided stability and protection to working families for eight decades.

Unfortunately, the program isn’t reaching everyone who needs it—in 2014, just 1 in 4 jobless workers received UI benefits. In large part, that’s because policymakers have failed to update UI to keep pace with dramatic changes in the American workforce and overall economy. But in some states, lawmakers have done even more damage by cutting program benefits and tightening already-strict eligibility rules. This leaves workers—particularly low-wage workers, women, and people of color—without a safeguard if they lose their jobs.

Cutting UI also jeopardizes our entire economy, because it is our first line of defense against recession: it creates demand by boosting the spending power of struggling families, which helps to stabilize the economy during downturns. We’re currently enjoying our seventh year of economic expansion, but we’ve never had an expansion last longer than ten years—so lawmakers should be preparing for the next recession before it arrives.

Here are seven steps that would put the UI program on firm footing before the next economic downturn:

1. Give people enough time to find new jobs

Finding a new job takes time—in 2015, it took an average of 29 weeks. For that reason, UI was designed to replace about half of a typical worker’s wages for up to 26 weeks while she searches for work. But states have been slashing benefits so that they replace far less than half a worker’s wages, and nine states now offer fewer than 26 weeks of support (with Florida and North Carolina cutting off benefits after just half that time).

Since UI is an earned benefit—workers contribute to the program through payroll taxes, just like Social Security—these states are shortchanging workers on a protection they’ve earned. It’s time for Congress to set standards guaranteeing all qualifying workers 26 weeks of protection, and replacing at least half of wages for low- and middle-income workers.

2. Keep workers in the jobs they already have

UI includes a provision that can actually prevent layoffs from happening in the first place. Work sharing  gives employers the option to temporarily reduce their employees’ work hours—rather than laying them off—while UI steps in to replace part of workers’ lost wages.

It’s a win-win—workers keep their jobs and businesses retain experienced employees—but 21 states still haven’t established work sharing programs. Policymakers should ensure work programs exist in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, so that employers and workers have an alternative to layoffs during the next recession.

3. Train unemployed workers for new careers

Many workers whose jobs fall prey to globalization and technological change will need to retrain for work in a different sector. Our nation’s workforce development system—and UI’s reemployment services, in particular—is highly effective, but it is woefully underfunded. As a result, the system doesn’t reach nearly enough workers. Worker retraining actually has bipartisanship support—the only hold-up is Congress’s failure to put more money where its mouth is.

4. Include low-paid workers

It’s bad enough that workers today can legally be paid a poverty wage. But leaving low-wage workers without assistance during unemployment because they were underpaid—even when they have typically contributed the same amount in unemployment tax as higher earners—is downright absurd. Yet because most states use an earnings threshold to determine who is eligible for UI, low-wage workers are only one-third as likely to get UI as higher earners (despite being twice as likely to be laid off).

To avoid punishing low-wage workers, UI eligibility should be based on the number of hours worked—not the amount of money earned. Once someone has worked 300 hours at the state’s minimum wage over the course of two calendar quarters, they should automatically qualify.

5. Protect more women in the workplace

Women are now primary breadwinners in 40% of American households, but UI hasn’t adapted to keep pace with this reality. Women are twice as likely as men to be part-time workers, but since part-time workers are excluded from UI in one-third of states, many women are being unfairly disadvantaged. Women are also more likely to have to leave the workforce to care for an ill relative or for personal reasons such as escaping domestic violence, and some states don’t allow them to receive UI when they search for new work.

All states should extend UI coverage to part-time workers, as well as workers who must quit for so-called “good causes.”

6. Make sure all workers pay their fair share

UI is funded through two modest payroll taxes. Nearly every worker—whether they are making millions of dollars or minimum wage—contributes the same $42 per year in federal UI tax. This is because workers only pay federal taxes on the first $7,000 of their wages every year. This hasn’t been adjusted in 33 years, and each year the tax gets more regressive. Congress should fix this by broadening the taxable wage base—for example, by applying UI taxes to earnings up to $59,000 (about half of the Social Security wage base). This would allow us to lower tax rates while still collecting the same amount of revenue.

7. Build the emergency exits before the next fire.

Jobs are scarce during recessions, so laid-off workers need longer on average to find new work. For that reason, UI has a program called Extended Benefits (EB), which is supposed to automatically activate when a recession approaches. It’s a great idea, but the triggers that turn on the EB program don’t respond quickly enough when unemployment rises, so the assistance EB provides is often too little and too late. To trigger EB now, more than 5% of the workforce would need to be receiving UI benefits—but since so few workers are eligible for UI, that’s a tall order.

Policymakers should fix these triggers so that the UI system is not caught unprepared when the next downturn arrives.

In the longer term, policymakers should give unemployment protections a big-picture update to match the modern economy.

Even if UI were fully updated, a substantial share of unemployed jobseekers today would remain ineligible for UI. This includes new college graduates and caregivers returning to work, as well as gig economy workers such as Uber drivers and TaskRabbit workers. To assist these workers, we should create a Jobseeker’s Allowance—a modest short-term stipend to support job hunting and training. Many countries—such as the United Kingdom and Germany—already have similar programs that help workers connect to job opportunities and improve their work-related skills.

Economic expansions don’t last forever—and experts are increasingly calling on Congress to prepare the nation for the next recession. By taking concrete steps today to fix the cracks in our nation’s unemployment protections, policymakers can protect more working families against the hardship of job loss.

I decided I wanted to do more than just survive, so I did the things that people do when they embrace their lives. I took a spontaneous girls’ trip. I went to a Jill Scott concert. I bought myself a fancy pair of shoes, and I cut my hair short.

For a while, I felt like everything would be OK. Then, a few weeks after my 35^th birthday, I lost my job.

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The morning that I was laid off, I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked into my boss’s office. There was a woman in the room I’d never met before, from Human Resources. She said all the things she is trained to say to soften the blow—“it’s not you, it’s the budget,” and “there are ways to deal with a ‘Reduction in Force’”—but there was no amount of wordsmithing that could change the facts.

I was unemployed.

That night, I sat down with my husband to figure out how we were going to make ends meet. We made a lot of deep cuts in our budget, including taking our seven-year-old daughter out of the aftercare program she loved. We tried to explain it to her the best we could and she seemed to take it in stride—but her sleep terrors told a different story. One night, in her sleep, she asked: “Mommy, what happens if we run out of money?”  My heart was broken, but I couldn’t tell her how worried I really was.

The truth is, her aftercare wasn’t the only major loss. I also lost my health insurance, which is crucial for managing my symptoms. The medications and appointments are expensive, and without them I could form new lesions on my brain that make the condition worse. Plus, stress alone can exacerbate MS. Treatment for that requires IV steroids—another expense, which leads to more stress, which leads to more symptoms.

The problem is, it’s hard to stay calm when your identity is being called into question. I had been working in public health for a decade, and I’ve kept a steady job of some kind since I was 13 or 14 years old. I was raised to be a “worker bee”—I’ve been staff at daycares, offices, restaurants, and my church’s youth program—and I didn’t know what to do without a job.

I searched for a new position with fervor: I checked with community colleges, health departments, department of human services, and universities. It was important to me to find a job that I loved, and that matched my experience, but they were few and far between—and my family needed an income.

To help us get by, I applied for unemployment benefits. I completed most of the process online, and I was able to call and speak to someone when I had questions. Soon, I was approved and began receiving a weekly stipend.

The benefits certainly didn’t replace my job—they only make up for about one-third of my income—but they’ve given us a little time. We have been able to keep our two-year-old in daycare so that I can go to job interviews, and we can pay the power bill, buy groceries, and put gas in the car. But my benefits are about to run out, and our household expenses are not.

Compared to a lot of Mississippians, I’m truly blessed. Last year, less than 15% of unemployed people in the state received these benefits—the other 85% were left to piece together a living however they could. Still, politicians are talking about cutting the program even further.

I can’t help but wonder if they have ever had to walk a mile in these shoes. Have they had to make the decision to take their children out of school? Or choose between paying the mortgage and buying groceries? If they had, maybe they’d choose differently.

As our boss walked away, panic shot through my body. It was 2009. The recession had now smacked us right in the face.

When Dylan and I tried to get the two months of back pay that we were owed, the North Carolina Department of Labor flatly told us there was no recourse, and suggested we apply for unemployment benefits (UI). The process was daunting.  It required a lengthy registration and application, a long lead time before we’d receive any benefits, and a “weekly certification” to prove we were seeking new employment. Eventually, our first unemployment checks came in. Mine totaled around $150 per week, Dylan’s around $85 per week.

Our daily job searches and revised resumes were fruitless. We delayed paying bills, cashed in coin jars, and sold off the few luxury items we had, like film cameras and well-played, treasured records. But it wasn’t enough to keep us in our apartment.

We made the difficult decision to move into the basement of my future mother-in-law’s home in New Hampshire. Our unemployment benefits, though meager, were key to getting us a moving truck so we could have a roof to live under and hold onto the things we hadn’t sold.

Fourteen months later, I was laid off again—right after I had returned from our honeymoon. Dylan, too, had lost his job in New Hampshire shortly before we were married.  Instead of newlywed bliss, we faced stress and fatigue as we crunched numbers to make ends meet.

Luckily, the process for claiming unemployment was much easier and faster in New Hampshire. And since our recent jobs had paid us slightly higher wages, and New Hampshire policies were far more generous, our checks came in at $450 between the two of us—almost double what we received in North Carolina.

But the bills continued to pile up on the kitchen counter. There were stacks of legal pads on the nightstand. We postdated and subtracted to survive—a process made more difficult on an empty stomach, which was too often the case for us. We eventually applied for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  After we got through its long application process the program gave us a second huge sigh of relief. We could eat. Therefore we could think. Crunch some more numbers.

Six years later, my husband and I still live paycheck to paycheck. But the specter of poverty sits right on my shoulder. It’s there. Always.

Because I have faced the reality of living on a shoestring, I know how critical programs like unemployment insurance and SNAP are. Without them, the story of our small family would be radically different. We would not have gone on to start our own business, begun to build up our savings (albeit slowly), or, with trepidation, started to dream again.

But public assistance has become even harder to secure in states like North Carolina. Since we left, the state legislature has passed harmful cuts to the UI program. Now residents are eligible for just 13 weeks of UI—half the duration permitted in most other states. In our case, this harsh time limit wouldn’t have given us any chance of finding suitable jobs and applying for them, let alone completing the process of interviewing and securing a start date.  In contrast, the state of New Hampshire offers modest insurance benefits that gave us the boost we needed to get back on our feet.

I know too many people who work hard and get knocked down. It’s time for an unemployment insurance system that lifts people back up—no matter where they live.

But their experience will be different this time. Not only is it unlikely that jobs will return quickly, but draconian changes in the state’s UI program have meant that workers can no longer rely on the program to help keep them afloat until their next job. One man shared that his UI benefits represent less than one-fifth of what he used to earn—only about half of what he would have received from the social insurance program during previous periods of unemployment.

He is not alone. A young woman who was laid off from her job at a non-profit in North Carolina’s capitol Raleigh—a city recognized for its relatively strong labor market—is still struggling to find work in her field and has taken part-time jobs since her unemployment insurance ran out. Despite her graduate degree and solid work experience, opportunities to continue in her career or pursue a new one have been stymied by the immediate need to pay for rent and food.

Meanwhile, prospects for workers are only getting worse, as solidly middle-class jobs in North Carolina’s remaining manufacturing counties continue to be lost. And, given how unlikely it is that these lost positions will be replaced by good jobs, these layoffs could spur a ripple effect in the local economy, harming every community business from the suppliers who sell parts to manufacturing plants, to local grocery stores and restaurants that serve the workers these companies once employed. In the past, UI benefits could have given cash-strapped unemployed workers money to spend, stimulating consumer demand that would keep these businesses operating—but North Carolina’s policymakers have crippled the program.

It’s clear that North Carolina’s workers—and its economy—need UI more than ever. However, extreme policy choices have left the state’s UI system unprepared to address the fallout of these layoffs, let alone the next economic downturn.

As a result of years’ worth of tax cuts for businesses, North Carolina’s Unemployment Trust Fund was quickly overwhelmed when unemployment rose during the Great Recession, and the state went into debt to pay the UI benefits it owed. In 2013, rather than restoring the program to solvency, leaders in the General Assembly instead pushed through cuts to North Carolina’s UI program that reduced the number of weeks workers could collect benefits, slashed UI’s weekly benefit amount, and limited job training and workforce development opportunities.

These changes have been devastating to North Carolina’s working families. As a result, North Carolina’s UI system went from being fairly average compared to other states to downright stingy. Today, just 1 in 10 jobless workers in North Carolina receives UI—the lowest level in the nation. And, although nearly a third of jobless workers are out of work for 26 weeks or longer, the state offers just 13 weeks of UI for them to fall back on. This is coupled with steep benefit cuts: The average weekly benefit has dropped to a meager $233—just one-third of what is required to meet the basic needs of a family with one adult and one child in North Carolina.

In the name of helping businesses, North Carolina’s leaders took an extreme approach that will actually hurt its economy: When the next economic downturn arrives, UI payments will be insufficient to ensure that workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own can maintain their spending and thus generate the demand for goods and services produced by local businesses. Even more troubling is the fact that cuts to unemployment insurance—a program designed to sustain the American middle class—come at a time when North Carolina is experiencing the fourth-largest decline in the nation in the share of adults with middle incomes. Cuts to the UI program have likely exacerbated this trend: Many workers are now forced to take jobs for lower pay because they cannot afford to search for higher-quality employment. By tearing down UI—a program intended to ensure that job loss doesn’t push working families off the economic ladder—lawmakers have actually acted to expand the ranks of workers earning low wages.

It would be bad enough if North Carolina had stopped there. But unemployment insurance cuts have been made worse by state policymakers’ eagerness to pursue every punitive measure available to them across other critical programs.

For example, state leaders have implemented a time limit on access to food assistance in counties whose labor markets were deemed too weak to provide jobs to all those who want to work. In addition, they’ve refused to invest state dollars in specific skills training or career pathways that would allow jobless workers to prepare for future jobs and new careers. And they have made too little commitment to helping rural communities—and those struggling with the loss of manufacturing jobs—rebuild their economies.

Our state leaders must commit to pushing forward better policies that support jobless workers in North Carolina. However, the UI system is ultimately a state-federal partnership. So key federal reforms are important to ensure all those who are jobless and seeking work in our state have a better chance of staying connected to the labor market.

A first step for the federal reform is to set minimum standards for state systems—including North Carolina’s—that are based on what works to support the economy and connect unemployed workers to jobs. Such minimum standards must include the provision of at least 26 weeks of UI benefits for laid-off workers, and benefit amounts that are sufficient to support jobless workers while they seek a new job. Beyond that, federal investments should place a greater emphasis on re-employment services so that jobless workers can connect with local employers and access skills training they need to advance their careers.

North Carolina’s unemployment insurance cuts surpass nearly all other states’ in their harshness, and have been a disaster for jobless workers and their communities. What state policymakers are likely to discover when the next recession arrives—if not before—is that these cuts will come at enormous cost to our economy as well.