- I've been home for a whole year out of working,
and my job was substitute teaching with the county.
- I've been a nurse for 22 years,
and I have recently been affected
by the COVID-19 pandemic.
I had to work on what I went through.
And I have not worked yet.
It's been a few months.
- Tonya Hughes and Holly Howerton are like many Americans
who are looking for work as the US economy opens back up
and recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
- Coronavirus and unemployment,
and week after week, they both keep spreading.
- It's a record-shattering 6.
6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week.
- Today is the first of the month,
and that means bills are often due.
Millions of Americans
now suddenly trying to make a decision.
How are they gonna pay them?
- Over 8 million people who lost their job
during the pandemic year
and have not been able to return to work
and go back to their old job, or even a new job.
- Do you believe enhanced unemployment benefits
had any effect on diminishing
or return to work in some categories?
- No, nothing measurable. - And the political spheres,
and particularly the White House versus Republicans in Congress
and quite a few Republican governors,
have been debating whether or not some people
are choosing to stay home and not return to work
because of the extra unemployment money
that the federal government is giving out right now.
- Paying people more in unemployment
than they could receive from working
is an act of substantial economic self-harm.
- More than a dozen states,
mainly headed by Republican governors,
have now said that they will no longer
pay the extra $300 federal supplement,
so they've rejected that extra money
in order to push people back to work.
So now someone is going from $600 to $300 on average.
- Increase benefits? Look, no.
I mean, I think we're getting people back to work.
- It is time for America to get back to work.
- But for Hughes and Howerton, some federal aid
have at least helped them keep up
with expenses while they're out of work.
- I had filed for unemployment.
The amount of it, the stimulus, the additional $600
to what I was receiving
helped with my monthly bills and food coming in.
- Well, I got the standard stimulus that everyone else did.
I have been researching this whole time for anything
I could find out there that could help a single parent
that was a nurse that is no longer able to work
because of what I went through, and I couldn't find anything.
I even wrote the president and got nothing -- nothing back.
I know I have to work, and that's the only thing
that, you know, I'm good at.
I could jump right back into it, but I'm not ready.
- I talk to unemployed people almost every day.
Have I spoken to some unemployed people
who are not returning to work
because they are earning about $600 a week,
which basically works out to a $15-an-hour job?
Yeah, they are earning more than if they went back to work,
particularly at a $10- or $11- or $12-an-hour job.
But what I keep stressing to people is 9 times out of 10,
when I'm talking to unemployed people,
the vast majority of reasons that I get for
why they're not able to go back to work right now
or ready to go back to work right now
are three very different reasons.
Number one, some people still waiting to get vaccinated
or haven't passed that two-week mark after their second shot.
Number two -- it's childcare.
And the last one that I think people need to understand
is this year has changed people.
- The other one was like 93.
- Yes, there's lots of job openings,
but people don't necessarily want to race back
to the job they had before.
- It did help me to re-evaluate.
Before COVID had actually set in,
I was working with Amazon and I was doing
Uber driving and Postmating,
but I would like to move on to other things of interest.
- Howerton is actively applying to return to work,
but the time off has helped her realize her next move.
- They diagnosed me with PTSD now from this.
I was done, and then I thought,
"You know, I'm not gonna let anybody take this away from me.
You still have that feeling
because you were responsible for these people,"
and so it's -- it's just been a lot.
But it took me a little time to come to the conclusion that,
you know, I do still need to be a nurse.
I do still make a difference.
I just have to change my scope.