As the agency that administers the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program for the state of Utah, the Department of Workforce Services is concerned with evaluating the program and outcomes for its recipients. In an ideal scenario, displaced workers would temporarily collect UI benefits and soon after regain economic self-sufficiency by returning to the work force. But it is not clear how often this is the case with Utah’s UI recipients. To understand how UI beneficiaries fare, especially in regards to their benefits duration and subsequent labor market outcomes, an analysis was conducted for a report in the latest Insights article. The main aim of the report is to shed light on the activities and outcomes of displaced workers in the UI program.
The economic characteristics of two different groups were profiled: those who returned to UI after leaving and those who did not. Besides that, the report revealed that a longer duration on UI resulted in considerably lower expected wages during the first year off UI. The full report can be accessed here.
