Unemployment insurance should be paid at 65 per cent of previous wages, up to a cap set at the median earnings of £2,260 per month, says The Inquiry, a collaboration between the Resolution Foundation (RF) and the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics (LSE).
The researchers propose a cautious approach of initially paying unemployment insurance for at most three months, after which eligible lower-income workers could continue to receive support through Universal Credit. The proposed scheme is – perhaps surprisingly – fairly modest in cost, at only £0.4 billion per year in 2024-25 prices, covering 50,000 eligible workers.
Here’s the study (pdf): https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/From-safety-net-to-springboard.pdf
Could be wrong but I think Denmark does something similar to this, only it’s significantly more generous. 90% for three years, with some pretty good incentives to train up along the way.
Even if you’re one of those ‘we don’t want to become a nation of freeloaders’ you can surely appreciate that removing the terrifying consequences of not being employed would make an awful lot of shitty businesses book their ideas up.
Remove their biggest bit of leverage and suddenly they’d have to treat their workers with a modicum of respect and dignity.
