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Four-day workweek gains traction despite pushback

Mark Takano introduced a bill that would reduce the standard workweek to 32 hours

The long weekend of Labor Day could become standard if the four-day workweek catches on.

Many U.S. companies are experimenting with a shortened workweek amid pandemic-related concerns about workplace norms while legislation calling for a 32-hour workweek has been introduced in Congress.

“As we consider what work should look like beyond this pandemic, we need to find new ways to achieve harmony across our professions, our passions, and our personal lives,” Aziz Hasan, CEO of the crowdfunding firm Kickstarter, wrote in a blog post in July.

Beginning next year, Kickstarter’s 90 full-time employees will work four, eight-hour days as part of a pilot program.

Meanwhile, the software and data firm Elephant Ventures, which has offices in New York and San Francisco, shifted to a four-day, 40-hour workweek in November after completing a 90-day pilot last year.

Elephant Ventures sales director Jonathan Cook said having Fridays off allows him to catch up on personal commitments that he had struggled to meet in the new pandemic normal.

“Previously, [I] felt like I was always working or watching kids, including weekends, and now Friday is a nice break,” Mr. Cook said. “I think longer workdays has, for many folks, myself included, improved productivity by improving meeting culture.”

Job postings mentioning four-day workweeks in August climbed about 75% compared to the same month in 2016, according to data from the employment website Indeed.

Last month, there were 1,162 four-day workweek jobs per 1 million compared to 657 per 1 million five years ago. Compared to August 2020, four-day workweek jobs from last month were 16% higher, up from 1,003 jobs per 1 million.

And one lawmaker is pushing for shorter workweeks. Rep. Mark Takano, California Democrat, introduced in late July legislation that would reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours and allow non-exempt employees to clock in overtime for any hours worked beyond that limit.

Boston College sociology professor Juliet B. Schor told CNBC she thinks the four-day workweek will grow more popular due to the cultural shift brought on by the pandemic, which highlighted overwork and burnout as challenges to mental health.

Middle-class workers, many of whom had to balance work with caring for their children or parents, will be the first to experience the shift before it gains traction, Ms. Schor said.

Uncharted, which assists social impact startups, reported no decreases in performance and less stress among employees when the Denver company shifted to a four-day, 32-hour workweek last September, after having experimented with the shorter schedule from June through August 2020.

Benefits of a shorter workweek could include an increase in productivity, an equal workplace and an increase in engagement, according to SpriggHR, a performance management platform.

But downsides could include poor management and benefits to competitors due to skipped workdays, the platform noted, adding truncated schedules cater to certain industries but not all.

Others have expressed concerns about condensed workweeks.

Allard Dembe, a public health professor at Ohio State University who has studied the health effects of working long hours, says he is not convinced that a four-day workweek benefits workers or businesses.

“The primary problem with the idea is that whatever work needs to be done, needs to get done in the same amount of total time,” Mr. Dembe wrote in a 2019 OSU blog post.

“The math is simple: working five eight-hour shifts is equivalent to working four 10-hour shifts. That’s true. But the implications of these schedules are different,” he said. “The danger is in disregarding the health effects that can occur as a result of fatigue and stress that accumulate over a longer-than-normal working day.”

Marc Effron, president of the Talent Strategy Group, argues that shorter workweeks aren’t more productive.

“The companies lauded for shorter weeks all self-reported happier, less stressed employees and the same amount of productivity,” Mr. Effron wrote in a TalentQ blog post last year. “But that means the employees didn’t accomplish anything more; they just did the exact same thing in less time. Their shorter work improved nothing for their customers, suppliers, or shareholders.”

Other countries are testing the four-day workweek.

Spain agreed to finance companies who choose to try out a 32-hour workweek for its workers but without lowering their pay, The Guardian reported in March.

In New Zealand, Unilever said in November that it would test a four-day workweek for its 81 employees until December 2021, but still pay them for five days, according to Reuters.

Microsoft Japan made headlines in 2019 when it experimented with a four-day workweek and reported a 40% increase in productivity.

The five-day, 40-hour workweek has been the standard for less than 100 years. In the late 19th century, labor unions and organized trades began demanding eight-hour workdays as they rallied for better work conditions.

The idea gained traction in 1926, when the Ford Motor Co. became one of the first U.S. companies to adopt a five-day, 40-hour workweek. About a decade later, the federal government passed the Fair Labors Standards Act in 1938.

Brazil Suspends 12 Million Doses of Chinese COVID Vax

The Brazilian health regulator suspended the use of over 12 million doses of Chinese-made vaccines on Sept. 4 over being produced in an unauthorized plant, according to an official statement.

Authorities said the ban was “a precautionary measure” to prevent “possible imminent risk.”

“The manufacturing unit … was not inspected and was not approved by Anvisa in the authorization of emergency use of the mentioned vaccine,” the country’s federal health regulator Anvisa said on Saturday.

A day previously, Sao Paulo’s Butantan Institute, a local biomedical center founded by the state government, sent an alert to Anvisa. The institution was to fill and finalize 25 batches of 12.1 million doses upon their arrival in Brazil, under a partnership with China’s Sinovac.

Another 17 batches, totaling 9 million doses produced in the same plant, were on their way to Brazil, Butantan told the regulator.

The regulator has now issued a 90-day ban and is investigating the plant and the manufacturing process.

Brazil launched its vaccine rollout earlier this year with the vast majority of administered vaccines from Sinovac. More shots from other manufacturers have since come online.

Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said on Aug. 25 that people aged 70 or older or who have a weak immune system will be eligible for a third dose, starting Sept. 15—preferably with the Pfizer vaccine.

Brazil Sinovac vaccine
A health worker prepares a Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on June 18, 2021. (Rodrigo Paiva/Getty Images)

Diana dos Santos, 71, received two shots of the Sinovac vaccine but now refuses to leave home until she gets her booster.

“I can’t go out like before and I’m still afraid of all of this,” Santos told The Associated Press. “I will feel safer [with a booster].”

Chinese officials have maintained the vaccine protects against the Delta variant, particularly preventing hospitalizations and severe cases.

Brazil has reported over 580,000 deaths from the virus, but the country has seen a fall in both death rate and active cases in the past two months.

US will take in 50,000 Afghan refugees and spend up to $2,275 on EACH for housing, food and sending their children to school

  • State Department official said funds will be used to help resettle Afghans in the US over the next few months
  • Evacuees may also be given access to federal benefits such as Medicaid 
  • Former Delaware Governor Jack Markell is leading the resettlement process 
  • DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the US will take in around 50,000 Afghan evacuees 
  • Many people still in Afghanistan are living in fear for their lives under the Taliban rule as militants are said to be hunting for Western allies

The US will take in around 50,000 Afghan refugees and spend up to $2,275 on each for housing, food and sending children to school.

A State Department official told Bloomberg the Biden administration has set aside the funds to help tens of thousands of Afghans fleeing from the Taliban resettle in America over the next few months. 

The department is also exploring with Congress the possibility that evacuees will be given access to federal benefits such as Medicaid, the official said.  

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a press briefing Friday that at least 50,000 Afghan evacuees are expected to be resettled in the US following the Taliban takeover.  

This number includes US citizens, lawful permanent residents, visa holders, people who have applied for special immigrant visas (SIVs) and other Afghans who are most at risk under Taliban rule such as journalists and aid workers.  

Former Delaware Governor Jack Markell has been tasked with leading the resettlement process of those evacuated to the US.

Dubbed ‘Operation Allies Welcome’, the program will work alongside the National Security Council, Domestic Policy Council, DHS, and other federal agencies. 

Around 200 private agencies have also been brought on board to help get eligible Afghans resettled as quickly as possible. 

Thousands of evacuees are being granted entry to the US under humanitarian parole, which admits them on an emergency basis.

Once on US soil, evacuees on this program have one year to apply for a permanent visa to stay.    

A resettlement director told Bloomberg that plans are in place to give these evacuees federally funded health insurance until the end of September. 

Mayorkas said Friday the relocation efforts are part of the US’s ‘enduring commitment’ to the people who worked with or helped the US during its 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

‘Our commitment is an enduring one. This is not just a matter of the next several weeks,’ he said. 

‘We will not rest until we have accomplished the ultimate goal.’

The US has ‘a moral imperative to protect them, to support those who have supported this nation,’ he added.

Mayorkas said the 50,000 figure was an estimate which could become greater and is not to a particular deadline.  

Around 40,000 evacuees have already made it through security vetting and arrived in the US, including US citizens or permanent residents.    

Federal data obtained by CBS News shows around 25,600 were being housed at US military sites as of Friday.

Eight military sites across five states of Virginia, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Jersey and Indiana are being used as temporary housing for the evacuees.

As of Friday, there were: 8,800 at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin; 6,200 at Fort Bliss, Texas; 1,700 at Fort Lee, Virginia; 3,700 at Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst; 650 at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico; 800a at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia; 3,650 at Fort Pickett, Virginia; and 65 at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. 

The sites are expected to be able to collectively take in 50,000 people by September 15.  

An unknown number of people who helped the American government in its two-decade war in Afghanistan didn’t make it out before the US’s last evacuation flight on August 31.

Many are now living in fear for their lives under the Taliban rule. 

The Taliban has claimed it will not retaliate against people who worked with Western allies and has said it will not be returning to the hardline restrictions seen two decades ago including a lack of women’s rights.

However, last month, RHIPTO Norwegian Center for Global Analyses reported that militants were already going door-to-door to hunt for ‘collaborators’ of the US or Nato.   

The UN also said it had received credible reports of ‘summary executions’ of civilians and Afghan security forces who had surrendered to the Taliban. 

Several reports have also surfaced that the Taliban is trying to access and official files left behind during the US’s withdrawal to identify and track down Western allies.  

An employee of the former government told Reuters the Taliban asked him in late August to preserve the data held on the servers of the government ministry he used to work for.

‘If I do so, then they will get access to the data and official communications of the previous ministry leadership,’ the employee said.

The employee said he did not comply and has since gone into hiding with Reuters not identifying the man or his former ministry out of concern for his safety.   

Nigerian Pastor Says Government ‘Fully’ Supports Killings Of Christians: Report

Thirty-six Nigerian Christians have been killed in attacks reportedly carried about by Islamic Fulani herdsmen in the month of August.

The recent killings, which build on this year’s previously reported death toll of several thousand, have prompted an outcry from locals who accuse the government of inaction and even of supporting the attacks. 

“It rained at the time the herdsmen invaded our village,” Judith David, a resident of Machun village in the state of Kaduna, texted Morning Star News. “We all had already gone to houses to sleep when the herdsmen attacked the village, forcing us to flee into the bush in the rain.”

The Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs for Kaduna, Samuel Aruwan, put out a statement on the attack. “Police personnel responded to a distress call from Machun village and mobilized there,” he said. “On arrival, they were also alerted by gunshots from neighboring Manuka. As the assailants fled the area, the operatives found the corpses of three victims.”

Rev. Jacob Kwashi, a pastor from the area, has accused the government of being in favor of the attacks.

“We have never seen an evil government in this country like the one of today. The government is fully in support of the bloodshed in Nigeria. We are being killed just because we are not Muslims,” he said. 

Kwashi, speaking at a funeral for 17 slain Christians, continued. “These evil Fulani jihadists are enjoying the backing of the government to go about killing people, destroying their houses and farmlands, yet when we try to defend ourselves, the government will go about arresting our people. What kind of justice is this?”

Aruwan, the state official, claimed that the government had actually helped save lives during other attacks on Christians in other villages. “The troops of Operation Safe Haven also rescued 12 persons who were fleeing from the attackers,” he said. 

A May report from the U.S. Department of State highlighted the many violations of religious liberty throughout Nigeria and mentioned the high level of violence present in the country.

“The government undertook 20 targeted military operations whose aim it stated was to root out bandits and armed gangs in the region and to arrest perpetrators of communal and criminal violence, but multiple sources stated that the government measures were largely reactive and insufficient to address the violence,” the report stated.

It also noted that in December 2020, “the Secretary of State designated Nigeria a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

Attacks are frequently pinned on the Fulani Herdsmen, a group which CBN news reports as frequently being, “radical Muslims who target Christians in their relentless attacks on villages across the West African country.”

As the Daily Wire reported in July, the killings of Christians in Nigeria this year have nearly matched the number killed last year. Nigeria is also ranked in the top ten of Christian relief organization Open Door’s list for the worst countries for Christian persecution, coming in at number nine. Nigeria ranked highly in all categories, coming in especially strong for the amount of violence.  

These attacks come at the same time as many have voiced concerns about the future of Christians in Afghanistan as the Taliban has come to power following the U.S. hasty withdrawal. As The Daily Wire previously reported, the Taliban were allegedly combing through phones to identify Christians. 

“We’re hearing from reliable sources that the Taliban demand people’s phones, and if they find a downloaded Bible on your device, they will kill you immediately,” said Dr. Rex Rogers, president of the Christian nonprofit organization SAT-7 North America, according to Religion News Service. 

Christians in the region continue to be targeted for religious persecution, often from radical Islamic terrorism.

The Death Of Truth In America Is A Direct Result Of Our Loss Of Faith

No matter where one looks, Americans can’t trust what is being told to them is the truth. All of Western civilization is in decline because the Christian church is in decline.

The American people are growing rightly skeptical of what they are told. For the past two years, they’ve faced an onslaught of lies and misinformation that has left them with little faith in our institutions — from Congress to the White House and even within the Christian church. A sermon I heard years ago should have opened my eyes to what would eventually become clear — we have seen the death of truth in America.

Several decades ago and with fewer gray hairs, my wife and I visited a church on Easter Sunday while on vacation. The sermon stunned me, but not for its incredible insights and biblical perspectives. The pastor, shortly after describing the miraculous and incredible resurrection of Jesus, concluded it didn’t matter if it was actually true — only that we believed it was true.

I thought that would be the one and only time I heard a pastor claim that believing in the death and resurrection of our Lord was not a fundamental principle of being a Christian, but I was wrong.

Many years later, Sen. Raphael Warnock from Georgia, also a pastor, tweeted, “The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.”

There it was again. The same trope that could not be more antithetical to Christianity. As Jesus’ disciple Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 15: 17-19, said, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

The question: How could we have gotten so far from the fundamental truth of Christianity, that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was resurrected to join the Father in eternal life?

The answer: We’ve deluded ourselves into believing that truth is relative. That same delusion I should have seen cropping up in the Christian church has now made its way into the mainstream, leading to the death of truth in America. Today, we see it manifesting itself in our norms, education system, media, and politics.

Men identify as women and we accept that as truth. Does it matter that if we examined their chromosomes they would be biologically male? Not in today’s world. What has been true since the dawn of time is suddenly out the window.

It should come as no surprise that the very same people who would refuse to acknowledge the incontrovertible genetic evidence that said woman is a biological male will listen to whatever armchair experts believe about COVID-19 and deem it “science.” But if you so much as question the efficacy of mask mandates, lockdowns, non-Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines, or — heaven forbid — the origins of the COVID-19 virus, you are dubbed “anti-science.”

Politicians misrepresent election integrity legislation and big corporations genuflect with boycotts of those states — justifying their actions with deliberate lies. No matter where one looks, Americans can’t trust what is being told to them is the truth. If you question the new leftist orthodoxy of “it’s all relative,” you face the wrath of “cancel culture.”

Truth is the core principle of Judeo-Christian values, which are the foundation of Western civilization. Judeo-Christian values are derived from the Bible. If you want to know the reason for the death of truth in America, look no further than the decline of Americans who choose to live their lives based on the values laid out in the Bible.

It is not simply America. All of Western civilization is in decline because the Christian church is in decline. The fall of the church is due to the fact that it has become unmoored from truth — following the culture instead of leading it.

While politicians and the courts have stripped America of its foundations, mainstream Christian denominations have been largely silent. The Bible is not even allowed in our schools, we’ve replaced the biblical creation story, Christians are arrested for trying to practice their faith, and biblical morality is considered hate speech.

Winston Churchill once said that America will do the right thing after it had tried everything else. We’ve tried everything else. The Christian church in America must muster up some courage — and repentance — and lead.

Globalist Strategy for Christianity

Amazon’s dreadful new movie Cinderella is woke, feminist nonsense intended to indoctrinate young girls

In wokelandia, girlboss Cinderella obliterates the patriarchy by choosing her career over love, and the flaccid prince lets his sister take the throne. Why? Because women can have it all and men – obviously – are utterly useless.

Amazon Studios’ new movie ‘Cinderella’, written and directed by Kay Cannon, is a jukebox musical that sets out to upend the old-fashioned fairytale by injecting a powerful dose of girl power into its traditionalist veins. 

Starring pop singer Camilla Cabello, this woke re-telling – now streaming on Amazon Prime – might have been considered ideologically edgy in 1956, but is a bland, flat concoction that looks as unappealing as it sounds. 

To promote the new movie, cast members Cabello, Idina Menzel, Billy Porter and James Corden (also a producer of the film) recently got into costume and did a flash mob at various Los Angeles intersections where they sang the grating Jennifer Lopez hit ‘Let’s Get Loud’. 

After having seen a video of this occurrence, which included Corden sexually thrusting his hips in a mouse costume, I’ve been, like Winston Smith, haunted by rodent-filled nightmares. 

Putting the Cinderella story through the woke wash cycle seems like a painfully typical-for-the-times, Disney Channel-inspired, algorithm-assisted experience. The plot they came up with was that the new Cinderella is a fashion designer who, along with all the other women in the kingdom, is suffering under the patriarchy and its sexist traditions.

As everyone knows, Cinderella is supposed to marry the prince, but in this new wokelandia, she instead literally says, “I choose me!” and decides on her blossoming fashion design career over love. You see, this Cinderella doesn’t want to be confined to the basement or the Royal box. She wants to toss the glass slipper and shatter the glass ceiling. You go, girl!

Of course, Cinderella ultimately gets to have both her career and love when Prince Robert, played by Nicholas Galitzine, who – how do I put this? – doesn’t exactly seem like the type of guy who is into the ladies, and gives up his b*****ks, oops, I mean his claim to the crown, and follows Cinderella in her fashion career. 

You’ll be glad to know that Prince Robert’s sister, Gwen, an ambitious Hillary Clinton type bursting with so many great ideas that none of the men ever listen to, becomes ruler of the kingdom. Girl Power!

If that all sounds really egregiously dreadful to you, then you are not alone. The problem with ‘Cinderella’ isn’t just the relentless girlboss bullsh*t, it’s also the fact that the movie looks and feels like a bunch of 10-year-olds lip-synching to the radio as they put on a play in their grandmother’s backyard.

It also has a virtually incoherent script, is amateurishly directed, embarrassingly choreographed and abysmally acted. But besides that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

A big problem with the film is that its lead, Cabello, is an unappealing and unattractive screen presence who seems less a fairy princess in waiting than a rookie waitress stumbling through her maiden shift at a renaissance fair.

The first 45 minutes of the movie are run-of-the-mill garbage, but then the awfulness goes into hyper-drive when the king of crap arrives, Corden, who in an uncomfortable bit of typecasting plays an annoying fat mouse.

To add insult to injury, at about the same time Porter (acclaimed star of ‘Kinky Boots’ and ‘Pose’) brings his gay minstrel show to the festivities in the form of the character Fab G, who is described in the film’s promotional material as a “genderless fairy godparent”. Fab G is, you guessed it, “FABULOUS!”, but unfortunately is not genderless, as she describes herself as a “fairy godmother” in the film, which horrified me no end as it seems aggressively binary. Cancel ‘Cinderella’ for its binary conformism and trans-hate!

As for the rest of the cast, Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver play the king and queen and their work seems to embody the attitude that ‘the mortgage ain’t gonna pay for itself’, which as we all know, it isn’t. 

Menzel plays the wicked stepmother, but thankfully she isn’t really wicked, because women aren’t capable of being bad in wokelandia as they have no agency. Instead, the wicked stepmother is just a misunderstood victim of the patriarchy. 

The music in ‘Cinderella’, which features songs from Janet Jackson, Queen, Madonna and Ed Sheeran among many others, falls decidedly flat because the performances are dull and the arrangements so predictable they seem to be done by a second-grade music teacher.  

I understand this is the world we live in, and we have to suffer through these uber-woke movies and TV shows that only care about ‘the message’ and not the quality of the product or its entertainment value. But this feminist monstrosity is beyond the pale. 

It astounds me that in our already hyper-feminized-to-the-point-of-absurdity culture – which denigrates men at every turn and intentionally conflates true masculinity with toxic masculinity – that Hollywood still feels the need to so aggressively indoctrinate young girls and boys into this rancid woke nonsense. 

We’ve become a vapid and vacuous nation of clowns, cuckolds and eunuchs, and Amazon Studios, Corden, Porter and the awful new ‘Cinderella’ are a sign of how far and how fast we’ve fallen.  

Pandemic unemployment benefits set to end, shaking up labor market

As Labor Day weekend comes to a close, so too will expanded unemployment benefits for millions of people across the country.

The pandemic-tethered benefits were extended by the Biden administration in March as part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan and Republicans soon began crying foul as more people got vaccinated yet shortages in the labor market increased. The GOP and some economists say that the shortages have worsened because workers have opted to live off the benefits rather than find employment.

The programs that are ending include one that extended the length of regular unemployment benefits, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which covered some 4.2 million self-employed and gig workers who don’t qualify for regular benefits, and supplemental federal benefits that added $300 on to whatever unemployment states were offering.

The $300 payments stacked on top of state benefits made it so that, in some instances, people could receive much more money by being unemployed than they would working at a minimum-wage job.

The national average of statewide unemployment insurance before the pandemic was $387 per week, meaning some unemployed people in the United States were bringing in $687 per week on average with the $300 expansion — that equates to a $17.17 hourly wage, more than double the federal minimum wage.

The cessation of the expanded programs will largely affect those in states run by Democrats, as more than two dozen states, mostly with Republican governors, have already ended the benefits early in an effort to encourage people to find jobs.

The end of the benefits comes just after the August jobs report was released on Friday. The report fell far short of expectations and added to Republican criticism that there is a major labor shortage and the economy is not recovering from its pandemic-induced slump as robustly as it should be.

The economy added just 235,000 new jobs in August, much fewer than the 750,000 that economists had projected.

Rep. Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, told the Washington Examiner during a Friday interview that he was not surprised by the weaker-than-anticipated results.

“President Biden has effectively created a workerless recovery,” the Texas Republican said. “Our businesses are fighting to fill jobs and families are struggling with rising prices.”

Brady said that payments were keeping workers on the sidelines, and because Texas ended the benefits early, he said, his office is seeing an uptick in people applying, interviewing, and showing up for jobs.

Goldman Sachs released an analysis that concluded some 1.5 million people will be prompted to take jobs by the end of the year because of the Labor Day conclusion of the federal expanded unemployment benefits.

Goldman Sachs also projected that if the entire country had ended the benefits prematurely, July would have seen 400,000 more filled jobs.

Similarly, a comprehensive study released late last month by Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts economist, along with other researchers, did find modest increases in employment in states that prematurely terminated benefits. The researchers examined 22 states that had cut off the pandemic benefits in June and found that ending the expanded unemployment perks increased employment by 4.4%.

It also found that it decreased unemployment insurance recipiency among those who were unemployed and receiving benefits in April by 35%.

Despite that, Dube said that the study revealed the notion that removing the benefits would unleash a torrent of job applications was overblown.

“The idea was that there were lots of jobs — it was just that people weren’t looking. That was the narrative,” he told the New York Times. “I don’t think that story holds up.”

A recent Wall Street Journal analysis of Labor Department data found that nonfarm payrolls rose 1.37% from April to July in the states that retained the benefits compared to 1.33% in those that ended the benefits early.

During a phone call with the Washington Examiner, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said the cessation of benefits should have a positive effect on the job market because it will encourage some people to reenter the labor market and try to attain employment again.

“We all want good-paying jobs, better jobs, and more jobs, but when the government incentives are to the contrary or persuading people to stay home because it’s more lucrative for them, that’s a rational decision,” she said. “Work is good, it gives us purpose, it gives us dignity, and it increases our self-esteem.”

With the conclusion of the expanded unemployment insurance, some Republicans are now eyeing another factor that they believe could be keeping jobs at bay — the expanded child tax credit .

As part of the COVID-19 relief package, Democrats expanded the child tax credit by increasing the money that families received from up to $2,000 per child to $3,600 for children under 6 years old and $3,000 for older children. The biggest change, though, was that even a parent who was not working and had zero income could get the entire sum of the Democratic expansion, a move Republicans say is akin to welfare without work.

The system also switched to providing families with monthly payments, usually disbursed by the government via direct deposit. The first round of payments began going out in mid-July.

Brady said that about a month ago his office began to start hearing from businesses in his district who complained that the revamped child tax credits were hitting bank accounts and causing workers to leave their jobs.

It will remain to be seen to what extent the cutoff of the expanded unemployment benefits will have on the job market, but the U.S. will likely get its first glimpse when the September jobs report is released on Oct. 8.

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