[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                      S. Hrg. 117-144

                        HELP WANTED: A STRONGER
                     LABOR MARKET FOR ROBUST GROWTH

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                        JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

                                 OF THE

                     CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            OCTOBER 27, 2021

                               __________

          Printed for the use of the Joint Economic Committee
          
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]          


        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
46-616                     WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------          
        
        
                        JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

    [Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress]

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES             SENATE
Donald S. Beyer Jr., Virginia,       Martin Heinrich, New Mexico, Vice 
    Chairman                             Chairman
David Trone, Maryland                Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota
Joyce Beatty, Ohio                   Margaret Wood Hassan, New 
Mark Pocan, Wisconsin                    Hampshire
Scott Peters, California             Mark Kelly, Arizona
Sharice L. Davids, Kansas            Raphael G. Warnock, Georgia
David Schweikert, Arizona            Mike Lee, Utah, Ranking Member
Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington    Tom Cotton, Arkansas
Jodey C. Arrington, Texas            Rob Portman, Ohio
Ron Estes, Kansas                    Bill Cassidy, M.D., Louisiana
                                     Ted Cruz, Texas

                  Tamara L. Fucile, Executive Director
            Vanessa Brown Calder, Republican Staff Director
                  Colleen J. Healy, Financial Director
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                     Opening Statements of Members

                                                                   Page
Hon. Donald Beyer Jr., Chairman, a U.S. Representative from the 
  Commonwealth of Virginia.......................................     1
Hon. Mike Lee, Ranking Member, a U.S. Senator from Utah..........     3

                               Witnesses

Dr. Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, 
  Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, 
  Ann Arbor, MI..................................................     6
Mr. Skanda Amarnath, Executive Director, Employ America, 
  Washington, DC.................................................     7
Mr. Daniel Swenson-Klatt, Owner, Butter Bakery Cafe, Minneapolis, 
  MN.............................................................     9
Ms. Rachel Greszler, Research Fellow in Economics, Budgets and 
  Entitlements, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC..........    11

                       Submissions for the Record

Prepared statement of Hon. Donald Beyer Jr., Chairman, a U.S. 
  Representative from the Commonwealth of Virginia...............    38
Prepared statement of Hon. Mike Lee, Ranking Member, a U.S. 
  Senator from Utah..............................................    39
Prepared statement of Dr. Betsey Stevenson, Professor of 
  Economics and Public Policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public 
  Policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI..................    40
Prepared statement of Mr. Skanda Amarnath, Executive Director, 
  Employ America, Washington, DC.................................    52
Prepared statement of Mr. Daniel Swenson-Klatt, Owner, Butter 
  Bakery Cafe, Minneapolis, MN...................................    59
Prepared statement of Ms. Rachel Greszler, Research Fellow in 
  Economics, Budgets and Entitlements, The Heritage Foundation, 
  Washington, DC.................................................    63
Articles submitted by Representative Schweikert with associated 
  links..........................................................    81
    ``The Anti-Poverty, Targeting, and Labor Supply Effects of 
      the Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion''
    ``Which States Are Driving U.S. Employment Growth?''
Prepared statement for the record submitted by Senator Klobuchar.    81

 
                        HELP WANTED: A STRONGER
                     LABOR MARKET FOR ROBUST GROWTH

                              ----------                              


                      WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2021

                    United States Congress,
                          Joint Economic Committee,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 3:01 p.m., 
in Room 210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Donald S. Beyer 
Jr., Chairman, presiding.
    Representatives present: Beyer, Beatty, Pocan, Peters, 
Schweikert, Herrera Beutler, Arrington, and Estes.
    Senators present: Heinrich, Kelly, Warnock, and Lee.
    Staff present: Vanessa Brown Calder, Jackie Benson, Carly 
Eckstrom, Tamara Fucile, Sean Gogolin, Devin Gould, Erica 
Handloff, Colleen Healy, Liz Hipple, Adam Michel, Alexander 
Schunk, Sydney Thomas, and Emily Volk.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DONALD BEYER JR., CHAIRMAN, A U.S. 
        REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

    Chairman Beyer. So this hearing will come to order. I would 
like to welcome everyone to the Joint Economic Committee's 
hearing, entitled ``Help Wanted: A Stronger Labor Market for 
Robust Growth.''
    I want to thank each of our truly distinguished witnesses 
for sharing their expertise today, and now I will do an opening 
statement before turning to Senator Lee for his.
    One of the most important things we can do as a Congress is 
to help build a policy environment that encourages the creation 
of well-paying, high-quality, safe jobs, jobs that allow 
Americans to support themselves and their families, to create 
opportunities that provide workers with both a steady paycheck 
and the ability to care for loved ones when they are in need. 
Ensuring workers can navigate care and work responsibilities is 
crucial to boosting overall productivity and advancing long-
term and robust economic growth, which benefits us all.
    The purpose of this hearing is to examine the barriers to 
labor force participation. Why is it that certain workers have 
been unable to rejoin the workforce? How can policymakers help 
address this trend? And, despite the strength of the Nation's 
ongoing recovery, which the pace of new jobs created has been 
steady with almost 5 million Americans returning to work under 
President Biden--I believe the most in the first 10 months of 
any Presidency--the uneven return of the workforce we are 
witnessing really raises some concerns. It is particularly 
troublesome that women comprise nearly two to three workers who 
have dropped out of the labor force since the beginning of the 
pandemic.
    To understand the current situation, it is useful to look 
at preexisting trends in U.S. labor force participation. After 
increasing dramatically over the second half of the 20th 
century, women's labor force participation peaked in 2000 and 
has been declining since then. The reason for much of this 
decline has been the lack of structural support for women's 
full participation in the economy, such as paid leave and 
affordable and accessible childcare.
    The pandemic highlighted these underlying structural 
changes confronting our care infrastructure. Women remain the 
members of the family most often responsible for the greater 
share of care work. And now facing the burden of inadequate and 
unaffordable childcare, the impossible choice between caring 
for a sick loved one or getting a paycheck or pandemic-related 
disruptions of schools, many women have been unable to return 
to the workplace. So, if we don't take action to better support 
women who are returning to work, we may experience prolonged 
periods of worker shortages that will hurt our Nation's 
economy.
    As a small business owner for over four decades--I was just 
bragging that our family business was 48 years old last 
Saturday--I have seen firsthand how paid leave is important for 
supporting both small businesses and workers. It is inevitable 
that workers need to take time off to care for themselves or 
for a loved one, but only 23 percent of American workers have 
access to paid family leave.
    Unfortunately, the lower wage workers, the ones who are 
least able to take time away from work to care for a sick child 
or a relative, they are also the workers least likely to get 
paid leave from their employer. The universal paid leave 
program would allow parents to look for work with the knowledge 
that they can care for their kids without losing their 
paychecks. It would also allow employers to be able to retain 
experienced workers who need to take leave without having to 
pay them leave out of their own pocket, their employer pocket.
    The good news we can take from the current strong demand 
for workers is that we know from the recent past that, when 
there is strong demand, they do return to the labor force. 
Under President Obama, the U.S. began the longest period of 
continuous job growth in modern history. And the tightening of 
the labor market created opportunities for millions of 
previously marginalized workers to rejoin the workforce, drive 
up wages, particularly among low-wage work earners.
    So, while the coronavirus pandemic rocked the labor market, 
pushed the labor participation rate to lows we haven't seen in 
decades, the hot labor market before the coronavirus pandemic 
demonstrated that sidelined workers can be brought back into 
the labor force. And this offers us a useful example as we look 
to address the current challenges facing workers.
    But as helpful as strong demand for workers can be in 
pulling back--people back into the labor force, we have seen 
that if we want to make meaningful improvements in labor force 
participation, we must address these gaps, existing gaps, in 
workforce supports that help workers navigate both jobs and 
care responsibilities.
    Workers have made significant progress in the past year. 
Under President Biden, the unemployment rate has dropped to 4.8 
percent in September, 4 percent in Virginia, beating 
expectations. Nevertheless, as we see in many different ways, 
including supply chain disruptions, there is significant 
turbulence in the labor market. And it is incumbent on this 
Congress and on the Joint Economic Committee to examine and act 
on policies that make it possible for Americans to maintain 
their work responsibilities while ensuring for the well-being 
of their loved ones.
    So I am looking forward to learning from each of the 
witnesses today. And I am happy to introduce the vice chair of 
the committee, Senator Lee from Utah.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Beyer appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 38.]

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE LEE, RANKING MEMBER, A U.S. 
                       SENATOR FROM UTAH

    Senator Lee. Thank you very much, Mr.Chairman. I look 
forward to today's hearing.
    Throughout the history of our great country, Americans have 
worked to build businesses and employ workers and support 
families in the process. Through work, we have developed new 
ideas that have bettered our own lives and the lives of our 
neighbors, our communities, and our entire country. When work 
is no longer a part of our lives, we lose something fundamental 
to our ability to contribute and to thrive. Work is more than 
just a source of income. Work connects us with each other, and 
it connects us with a purpose that is greater than ourselves.
    But today work is in a state of crisis in America. Millions 
of Americans have fallen out of the workforce since the onset 
of the COVID pandemic. Workers are quitting their jobs at 
unprecedented rates, and labor unions are striking as demand 
for labor continues to grow.
    September's job report shows the smallest gain in payrolls 
this year, and nearly five million Americans are still on the 
sidelines. Across the country, there are more jobs than there 
are willing workers. The current employment situation should 
concern all of us, but declines in labor force attachment 
actually precede the pandemic.
    In a new report this week, the Joint Economic Committee 
Republicans evaluate the years-long question of why so many 
prime-age, able-bodied Americans have fallen out of the 
workforce. For men, connections to work have been declining for 
decades and hit a record low last year with the onset of the 
pandemic recession. For women, connections to work started 
receding in the last two decades.
    Our report finds that government programs and policies are 
making work less attractive and that many Americans are 
voluntarily disconnected from work. That is a problem for our 
country, and it is certainly a problem for our social fabric. 
Fortunately, there is a lot we can do to reconnect people to 
work.
    To begin with, we have to start to begin to exist--to 
address existing policy. In many instances, existing policy 
causes or at least exacerbates some of these problems. Over the 
last 18 months, Congress increased safety net benefits and left 
those new and expanded programs in place for too long. Congress 
authorized unemployment checks that were sometimes twice as 
large as Americans' paychecks and provided rent subsidies, 
stimulus checks, loan forbearance, and new healthcare coverage, 
as well as expanded food stamps. Importantly, most of those 
benefits did not require recipients to look for work, even 
after vaccines were widely available to protect workers and 
businesses as they began reopening and rehiring workers again.
    Current legislative proposals could make many of those 
antiwork incentives permanent, which is the wrong choice. 
Instead, Congress urgently needs to implement policies that 
draw disconnected Americans off the sidelines and into the 
workforce. Congress must remove disincentives to work by 
strengthening work requirements and safety net programs for 
able-bodied workers. We should also be working to eliminate 
existing barriers to entry. Anytime we can do that, it helps. 
Some of those barriers include things like occupational 
licensing and labor regulations that prevent a whole lot of 
Americans from entering new professions or working flexibly on 
their own terms.
    Finally, the Federal vaccine mandate is an obstacle to 
connecting people to work. And there is no legal or 
constitutional authority for it. The threatened employer 
mandate has not even been issued yet, and Utahns tell me that 
it is already jeopardizing their livelihoods and that 
unvaccinated workers are preemptively being put on unpaid 
leave, which leaves them without a source of income, yet 
cruelly also leaves them ineligible for unemployment benefits.
    Under the mandate, some Americans would be forced to make a 
personal health decision against their will or face losing 
their job and, with it, their ability to put food on the table 
and feed their families. This ultimatum to workers is 
unacceptable. It is unlawful. It is unconstitutional. But, even 
worse than all these things, it is immoral. It is savagely 
cruel. It is barbaric. It has no place in our society, not this 
one, never.
    Note that opposing the mandate is by no means the same as 
opposing the vaccine. And I do believe the vaccine is something 
of a medical miracle, one that helps increase safety and 
security for millions of Americans as we return to places of 
work. That is why I have been vaccinated. That is why I have 
encouraged every member of my family to be vaccinated and 
others generally. But today we have to acknowledge that that is 
different than telling everybody he has got to get it, 
regardless of religious beliefs or preexisting medical 
conditions or whatever is on someone's mind, because it is not 
right to tell people that the government is going to force 
their employer to fire them, leaving them unemployable, 
unemployed, and without access in many instances even to 
unemployment. That is wrong.
    As of now, we need workers' contributions more than ever, 
and we cannot pretend to know what is good for every worker or 
every business. We must put trust back in individuals, back in 
business owners, and local decisionmakers. We must stop making 
policy decisions that discourage a return to work. Reconnecting 
Americans to work is one of the most important policy goals of 
our time.
    I look forward to today's conversation on that essential 
topic.
    Thank you, Mr.Chairman.
    [The prepared statement of Senator Lee appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 39.]
    Chairman Beyer. I thank you, Senator Lee, very much.
    I would now like to introduce our four distinguished 
witnesses. Dr. Betsey Stevenson is a professor of public policy 
and economics at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at 
the University of Michigan. She served as a member of the 
Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2015 where she 
advised President Obama on social policy, labor market, and 
trade issues. She served as chief economist at U.S. Department 
of Labor from 2010 to 2011, advising the Secretary of Labor on 
labor policy and participating as the Secretary's deputy to the 
White House economic team.
    Dr. Stevenson has published widely in leading economic 
journals about the labor market and the impact of public 
policies on outcomes both in the labor market and for families 
as they are adjusting to the changing labor market 
opportunities. Her research explores women's labor market 
experiences, the economic forces shaping the modern family, and 
how these labor market experiences and economic forces on the 
family influence each other.
    Dr. Stevenson earned a B.A. in economics and mathematics 
from Wellesley College and an M.A. and PhD in economics from 
Harvard University.
    I believe, as the only male Member of Congress who attended 
Wellesley, I want to welcome you here especially.
    Mr. Skanda Amarnath is currently the executive director of 
Employ America, a research and advocacy organization that 
advocates for macroeconomic policies to promote sustainably 
tighter labor markets. He was previously a vice president at 
MKP Capital Management, where he served as a market economist 
and strategist. Prior to that, he worked as an analyst within 
the research group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 
graduated from Columbia with degrees in applied mathematics and 
economics.
    Mr. Daniel Swenson-Klatt has been the owner and manager 
since 2006 of Butter Bakery Cafe in Minneapolis, a small 
neighborhood bakery, cafe, and coffee shop. He is a member of 
Small Business for Paid Leave. Since 2013, he served as a board 
member for the Kingfield Neighborhood Association. And, prior 
to the Butter Bakery Cafe, he was a middle school teacher for 
over 20 years. He holds a bachelor's degree in English language 
and literature from St. Olaf College.
    And, finally, Ms. Rachel Greszler is a fellow in the Grover 
M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage 
Foundation, where she focuses on retirement and labor policy, 
such as Social Security, disability insurance, pensions, and 
worker compensation. Before joining Heritage in 2013, Ms. 
Greszler was a senior economist on the staff of the Joint 
Economic Committee--so welcome back--for 7 years. She completed 
her graduate studies at Georgetown University, where she earned 
master's degrees in both economics and public policy. She holds 
a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Mary 
Washington.
    So we will hear your opening testimonies in that order.
    So, Dr.Stevenson, the floor is yours.

 STATEMENT OF DR. BETSEY STEVENSON, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND 
    PUBLIC POLICY, GERALD R. FORD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, 
             UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, MI

    Dr. Stevenson. Thank you very much for the invitation to 
speak to you today about the labor market.
    The employment landscape, as you all noted, is in flux. 
Employment remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and yet 
employers report shortages of workers. Quits and the intention 
to quit have hit record highs as workers are seeking and taking 
advantage of new opportunities.
    To be clear, most people quitting jobs are immediately 
heading to other ones, many of whom have already lined those 
jobs up. Some blame unemployment benefits for keeping workers 
at home, yet strong evidence directly contests this claim. 
States that ended unemployment insurance early saw no 
pronounced rebound in employment. Moreover, some industries 
have made a full return and currently exceed pre-pandemic 
employment, even though their workers were also eligible for 
unemployment insurance.
    If unemployment insurance is not holding back the labor 
market, what is? There are three important factors influencing 
the labor market right now. The ongoing pandemic continues to 
shape the labor market, from supply chain problems reflecting 
COVID around the globe to virus-avoiding behavior by both 
consumers and workers within the United States. The second 
factor is ongoing challenges in combining work and caregiving. 
And the third factor is shifting preferences by both consumers 
and workers that is causing a massive reallocation in the labor 
market right now.
    I want to urge you to look below the headline jobs number 
because each month in the labor market roughly 6 million people 
leave jobs and 6 million people start jobs. The trick to 
growing employment is to have the number of people starting 
jobs exceed the number leaving jobs. This means you need to 
care as much about why people exit the labor force as you care 
about trying to get people to enter the labor force.
    And that is why I want to talk to you about caregiving. 
Challenges providing care for a child or an adult with chronic 
health issues is a very important reason that many people leave 
jobs. They may hope to eventually return. But those who leave 
the labor force have a lower chance of being employed in the 
future compared to those who are able to meet their family 
needs while remaining employed. Keeping people in jobs is much 
easier than helping them return to the labor market.
    The United States has one of the lowest rates of female 
labor force participation in the OECD, ranking 23 out of 34 
countries. That is not where we used to be. We used to be 
number six. What has happened? We have fallen behind other 
countries in providing family-friendly workplace policies.
    The late 20th century showed us what adding women to the 
labor force can do. Prior to the pandemic, our GDP was roughly 
15 percent larger than it would have been if women's employment 
had been what it was in 1970. Yet two out of every three 
caregivers in the United States are women.
    So I want to make three points about paid leave because we 
have had decades to study and learn around the globe. And we 
now know that paid leave is essential to greater labor force 
participation. Paid leave increases retention of workers, 
reducing the chances that they exit employment out of the labor 
force. The vast majority of businesses find that paid leave is 
either positive for their business or has no noticeable 
negative effect. And children benefit from time to bond with a 
new parent, leading to higher lifetime wages and greater 
employment as adults.
    I urge you as you consider these policies to care as much 
about employment in 20 years as you do now and so thinking 
about investments in children beyond paid leave, such as 
through the child tax credit and support for childcare services 
to support not only our current economy but our future economy 
because it is ultimately human ingenuity that fuels our 
economic growth. Economic growth in 20 years depends on the 
choices we make today about investing in our youngest members 
of society. Economic growth today depends on the choices that 
you make to support parents and children.
    The challenges that parents face during the pandemic were 
not unique to the recession. Instead, they highlight our 
failure to adapt childcare, workplace flexibility, and 
workplace parental leave policies to meet the needs of a 
workforce in which women held half of the jobs prior to the 
pandemic.
    The choices you make now about paid leave, early child 
education, and childcare will shape the U.S. macro economy for 
decades to come by influencing who returns to work, what types 
of jobs parents are able to take, and what kinds of promotions 
parents are able to receive and accept. So I urge you to choose 
wisely.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Stevenson appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 40.]
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Stevenson, very much.
    Next, we will hear from Mr. Amarnath.

 STATEMENT OF MR. SKANDA AMARNATH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EMPLOY 
                    AMERICA, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Amarnath. Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to 
testify at this hearing.
    As was noted, I am the Executive Director of Employ 
America. We advocate for macroeconomic policies that promote 
sustainably tighter labor markets. When labor markets are 
sustainably tighter, businesses actively compete for workers 
and are incentivized to make investments that improve 
productivity of their workforce and their businesses 
themselves.
    We are recovering at a rapid pace. But, until we can fully 
get behind this pandemic, we will not be able to recover all of 
the employment that has been lost. The presence of the Delta 
variant had identifiable impact on job growth in the food 
services sector in August and September. And, as another 
stylized example, education employment did not see its usual 
seasonal upturn in September because the impacts of the 
pandemic are still preventing a full normalization of 
conditions.
    The headline unemployment rate is 1.5 percent above where 
it was pre-pandemic, but this understates the true employment 
gap. The pandemic has also depressed labor force participation, 
which thereby distorts what the current unemployment rate is 
really telling us.
    Some might see this as a byproduct of people exiting the 
labor force for good. But the truth is we really don't know who 
is in the labor force and who is out of the labor force with 
any real precision, accuracy, or consistency. It is simply 
easier to look at who is employed and who is not employed and 
then benchmark to population and age structure, which is why I 
would recommend looking at the 25 to 54 year prime-age 
employment rate, what I would call the PER for short.
    It is 2.4 percentage points from its pre-pandemic peak in 
contrast to the 1.5 percent unemployment rate differential. 
That said, the PER has made a whopping gain of 0.8 percent over 
the third quarter. And, if we can continue to see these types 
of gains over the coming quarters, we will have made probably a 
full recovery over the course of next year. And this stands in 
marked contrast to what we saw in previous recoveries, which I 
would call jobless recoveries. We had a multiyear period of 
jobless recoveries after the previous three recessions under 
Presidencies of Democrats and Republicans alike.
    It took over a decade for the PER to recover from the Great 
Recession. It never recovered from its 2000 peak. The current 
trajectory might allow us to actually have a recovery in under 
3 years. And I would attribute much of the benefits here--
obviously, every recession is different, but the responsiveness 
of monetary and fiscal policy is likely to play a key role in 
staving off the worst of the--of recessions in terms of the 
vicious cycles in cutbacks, layoffs, loan defaults.
    Policy implementation always has its imperfections, but 
families across the income distribution have made it out of 
this pandemic with actually higher cash buffers. And, while 
there are--disincentives are a big sticking point politically, 
I would say that the best evidence available does not really 
show an identifiable effect, especially if we look at the 
evolution of job growth around unemployment insurance cutoffs.
    On the other hand, using fiscal policy to keep people whole 
has allowed a lot of those vicious cycles to not materialize to 
the same extent. And I think that is a big reason for why we 
have seen such a rapid recovery in contrast to previous 
recoveries.
    Tighter labor markets, I think, play--macro policy has a 
big role to play in keeping labor markets tight. And I think we 
are seeing that now in terms of wage growth differentials are 
compressing so people at the lowest wage levels are able to see 
the fastest wage gains. We have seen that the employment rate 
differentials between Black and White persons has actually 
narrowed considerably to all-time lows. And I expect, as we did 
over the latter half of the 2010s, the differential employment 
rates between those who have a college degree and those who 
only have a high school diploma will also narrow.
    That said, the rapid pace of this recovery, there has been 
a--it has been so uncharacteristically rapid that the byproduct 
of that is we have seen some of these challenges constraining 
job growth become more visible. It is everything from 
microchips to ports to childcare. And so institutions that had 
grown accustomed to slack labor markets' slow jobless 
recoveries have been caught offsides by the pace of the current 
recovery. Sources of underinvestment have been exposed.
    The challenges of today can only be tackled through 
persistent investments in greater capacity and greater 
resilience. That is as true for bottlenecked sectors like 
automobiles and logistics as it is for people who are not able 
to be fully employed due to the lack of access to affordable 
childcare. If we settle for a shallow recovery from here, 
businesses will continue to underinvest, and fewer people will 
be able to participate in the benefits of a growing economy.
    As a final note, while I have referenced the importance of 
achieving a full recovery in the PER from the pandemic, that 
should not be the ceiling of our ambitions. It should--this 
should disappoint us all that the U.S. is a clear laggard among 
comparable advanced economies in terms of the prime-age 
employment rate. For a stark example, Quebec has a PER of 7.4 
percentage points above the U.S. A key ingredient to their 
success has involved raising the employment rates of women 
through the availability of universal childcare.
    If the U.S. is looking to catch up to the rest of the world 
on labor market outcomes, it will require ambitious investments 
in macroeconomic policies that promote and sustain a tight 
labor market.
    Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Amarnath appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 52.]
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, sir, very much.
    Next, we will hear from Mr. Swenson-Klatt.

  STATEMENT OF MR. DANIEL SWENSON-KLATT, OWNER, BUTTER BAKERY 
                     CAFE, MINNEAPOLIS, MN

    Mr. Swenson-Klatt. Chairman Beyer, Senator Lee, members of 
the Joint Economic Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
be with you today and share my experience as a small business 
owner, representing Main Street Alliance, a national network of 
small businesses.
    I would also like to acknowledge that my home State 
Senator, Senator Klobuchar, has been a long and steadfast 
supporter of small business owners, and I really appreciate the 
work she has done.
    I have owned and operated Butter Bakery Cafe in Minneapolis 
for 16 years, partnering with the housing program to provide 
supportive internships during the last 9. My business has 
weathered recession, a move to a new location, major road 
construction, a pandemic, civil disruptions, and still we are 
open. I think of that as a major accomplishment but also a 
testament to my staff, my community support, and indeed to 
government support through the SBA.
    Just maintaining an 18-person crew is a full-time hat that 
I wear. We had 21 employees before the pandemic and dropped to 
a low of 12. Next week number 19 will be back on staff. I 
attract workers by offering a full wage, a fair wage, a healthy 
workplace, and a mission to serve our community. By choosing to 
offer a full wage to staff who customarily would rely on an 
unstable system of tipping, I get workers who invest in my 
business and currently have five with over 5 years.
    We build a culture that reinforces stability, and that 
model helps me. I spend less time on hiring, training, filling 
gaps in the schedule. It is good business, and it has been 
working. However, during the past year and a half, finding, 
retaining staff, indeed, the very model of my business has been 
turned upside down. I have needed 38 people over the past 18 
months to fill my workforce. They come and go.
    Many of the staffing obstacles small business owners have 
always struggled with have grown to a point of serious harm to 
our businesses. Where in the past I could use a few hundred 
dollars out of my pocket to get around a barrier for a staff 
member, the size and scope has exceeded my capacity. Without 
government support, I would have closed. Sadly, I know friends 
who did, who own businesses and did not have that support.
    My small business is still struggling. And, as I look to 
recover, rebuild, and, yes, even to grow, I am in a tough 
position. I do have working capital on hand, but it is in the 
form of a large debt. If used well, it might be able to be paid 
off through growth in my business. But right now I am still 
worried.
    We are facing challenges that are very different from the 
past, and I worry that current trends may not shift without 
some strategic investments in workplace supports from our 
government at all levels. And, frankly, you have bigger pockets 
than me.
    My applicant pool is limited in a number of factors, 
including lack of affordable high-quality childcare. I need a 
level playing field so employees with children can reach and 
afford childcare and get to a center or a childcare program. 
Currently my employees with children can only work limited 
hours.
    Access to affordable housing. While hundreds of new 
apartment buildings and units are going up around my cafe, only 
a tiny fraction are options that serve my workforce and the 
workforce of small business owners.
    Reliable, affordable transit would help. I do have to rely 
on transportation coming through for staff who don't walk to 
work, and I struggle more times than I admit with 
transportation options that fall through.
    A comprehensive paid leave program would be a way for my 
staff to take time off for health and personal reasons that 
doesn't put my business or their job at jeopardy. I am willing 
to contribute my part as an employer, just like I do for 
supporting sick staff, the unemployed, an injured or retired 
worker. The constraints of a small business budget do not allow 
me, though, to personally pay to begin a family or take care of 
a health crisis or find a safe place.
    Childcare, transit, housing, paid leave, they are just a 
few of the pieces. And there are so many more hats I have to 
wear to take care of my staff. And, with so many challenges 
resulting from this pandemic, bold, compassionate investments 
from our government will give me and my staff the hope and 
support we need to go to work, to get back to business, to grow 
again.
    Thank you for the chance to share my story, and I am happy 
to answer your questions today.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Swenson-Klatt appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 59.]
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Swenson-Klatt.
    Finally, Ms. Greszler, the floor is yours.

STATEMENT OF MS. RACHEL GRESZLER, RESEARCH FELLOW IN ECONOMICS, 
BUDGETS AND ENTITLEMENTS, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, 
                               DC

    Ms. Greszler. Good afternoon and thank you for the 
opportunity to testify.
    Today's labor market is unlike anything that we have ever 
experienced before in America, and certainly it is nothing that 
was predicted at the start of the pandemic. Wages are rising, 
and there has been a giant leap forward in family-friendly 
policies and workplace flexibility, and yet employers are 
struggling with this severe labor shortage. There were 10.4 
million job openings in August, even as 4.3 million workers 
voluntarily quit their jobs. Add to that an increasing number 
of employers who are being forced to fire workers that they 
desperately need because of an unauthorized Federal vaccine 
mandate, and we are at a gap of about 6 million jobs before 
what we had the trend prior to the pandemic. That has 
contributed to shortages of goods and services, longer waits, 
and higher costs.
    The solution to increase in employment is twofold. It needs 
to pay to work, and it can't pay to not work. The problem today 
is the latter. Government policies have made it so that it 
simply isn't worth it to work for some people.
    Eighteen months of unemployment benefits that pay people 
more to be unemployed than to work contributed to this drag on 
employment. States that ended those benefits early have 
experienced much faster recoveries. And an estimate shows that, 
had the States that didn't end the benefits early otherwise 
done so, they would have gained 800,000 more jobs in July and 
August alone.
    Then there has been massive expansions in ObamaCare 
subsidies, food stamps, and other welfare benefits that have 
made it possible for some individuals and families to be better 
off not working. This massive $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill 
will double down on employment losses by creating welfare-
without-work programs. It discourages people from taking jobs 
and, at the same time, raise taxes and micromanage employers so 
that they are less likely to create jobs.
    The Texas Public Policy Foundation estimated that this bill 
would reduce employment by 5.3 million, while Casey Mulligan 
estimated it would cost 8.7 million jobs. Most of those losses 
would come from expanded ObamaCare subsidies and also the 
monthly child payments that eliminate work requirements. A 
study by University of Chicago economists found that those 
monthly child payments would cause 1.5 million parents to drop 
out of the labor force. That is particularly troubling when you 
consider that those losses would disproportionately fall on 
lower-income and single-parent families where work is an 
essential component to breaking cycles of poverty.
    Unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics 
suggest that this could already be happening. When the pandemic 
first began, parents actually experienced fewer employment 
losses. But, since the late spring of this year, coinciding 
with the start of the monthly child payments, that trend 
actually reversed and parents' employment declined. Some have 
pointed to childcare struggles, especially when arguing for 
massive new childcare entitlement that would disproportionately 
benefit high-income families and be out of reach to families 
that prefer faith-based or family based childcare.
    But a May 2021 study by Jason Furman, former chair of 
President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, found that 
childcare struggles were causing zero impact on parents' 
employment. That was May 2021. And there is simply no 
explanation for why, since that point, a year after the 
pandemic, childcare struggles would now be causing this big 
drag.
    In addition to discouraging work, the Big Government tax 
and spend package would micromanage employers, limit workplace 
flexibility, and exacerbate supply shortages and cost 
increases.
    For example, just as workers' access to paid family leave 
has increased 64 percent over the past 5 years, politicians 
want to replace those flexible and accommodating policies with 
a one-size-fits-all government-controlled one. And then there 
is a push to ramp up fines on employers and force more workers 
into unions. The debacle at the ports in southern California 
shows what happens when unions refused to increase operations 
and when environmental and labor restrictions prevent 80 
percent of trucks in the Nation from entering the State and 
when government regulations limit how, who, and where people 
can work. And now as many Californians are fleeing the State, 
the reconciliation package seeks to impose California's failed 
policies on the rest of the Nation.
    Command economy tactics and cradle-to-grave welfare 
programs won't help Americans thrive because individuals, 
families, and employers are far better than politicians in 
making decisions that impact their everyday lives and those 
around them.
    When President Clinton signed the historic welfare reform 
in 1996, he quoted Robert Kennedy who said, ``Work is the 
meaning of what this country is all about. We need it as 
individuals. We need to sense it in our fellow citizens, and we 
need it as a society and as a people.''
    Politicians can help empower Americans to succeed by 
allowing them to keep more of their earnings, by reducing 
regulations, by allowing more flexible job opportunities and 
more accommodating benefit options, by expanding educational 
choices, and by trying to help get people off of welfare 
instead of anchoring them to it.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Greszler appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 63.]
    Chairman Beyer. Ms. Greszler, thank you very much.
    And thank all of you for your testimony.
    We will now begin a round of questions. I will begin.
    I am reading Rick Atkinson's new book on the Revolutionary 
War, where I discovered that George Washington, as the first 
general of the Continental Army, required smallpox vaccinations 
for all the troops. A lot of history there.
    I would point out that 1 million people in American have 
already died from COVID-19, and it is not just about your 
personal desire to risk death. It is about the significant 
likelihood that you will cause the illness or death of others. 
We certainly wouldn't want people with very contagious polio or 
leprosy or smallpox wandering through our businesses and our 
population.
    Dr. Stevenson, I am concerned--Ms. Greszler talked about 
the States that eliminated those benefits early had faster 
growth than those that didn't. I read studies in both The Wall 
Street Journal and New York Times that pointed exactly to the 
opposite. Can you as former chief economist of the Labor 
Department comment on that?
    Dr. Stevenson. Yes. So I have seen a number of studies that 
found that there was no effect at all from ending the 
unemployment benefits early in terms of increasing employment. 
That is what economists, market-based economists, found at 
places like Goldman Sachs and other--I would say market 
economists who have an incentive to go where the truth is. I 
have also seen academic economists like Arin Dube, who did a 
very deep analysis and found no real effect.
    The biggest criticism I have heard of these--said on these 
studies is that, when the States ended those unemployment 
insurance benefits early, they also saw a rise in COVID cases 
from the Delta variant and whether that is clouding any ability 
to do the analysis. I am not sure if that is what Casey 
Mulligan was trying to account for to get the results that you 
just heard, but there is a wide range of studies that do find 
the exact opposite that we saw and that ending unemployment 
benefits early did not send people back to work.
    Chairman Beyer. Just note that Virginia kept the benefits 
and has an unemployment rate nine-tenths of a percent below the 
national average.
    Mr. Swenson-Klatt, you had talked about the baker who had 
one week of leave added up and you paid the rest of it, the 
other 2 weeks, and actually deferred your own salary. How many 
small business people do you think can pay this out of their 
profits or defer their own salaries to keep their people?
    Mr. Swenson-Klatt. Thank you.
    And, before the pandemic, those kind of opportunities were 
really pretty hit and miss, whether the bakery was ready, had 
some cash-flow, whether I could feel like I could give away a 
couple of months of time. There are plenty of times I never did 
that for staff who needed the time away, who we just didn't 
have the cash to do it. And it is more the story that I hear 
from other employers that they just wouldn't have paid that. It 
wasn't available to them. We don't have that kind of cash flow.
    When the pandemic assistance came, all of a sudden, I found 
I had a way to pay people to be away. And that was just an 
amazing gift for me as a business owner and for my staff.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you.
    Dr. Stevenson, how do you feel about the adding the work 
requirements? And what is the evidence about work requirements 
and its impact on these families that need the help?
    Dr. Stevenson. So the amount of money in the child tax 
credit is terrific for reducing poverty but not enough to 
replace a salary and this is--or wages, and this is why I don't 
think that the evidence is very strong that it would lead 
people to not work.
    Let me be clear. I very much support increasing financial 
support for childcare. Putting a work requirement on the child 
tax credit is turning it into a childcare credit for single 
parents because you are requiring them to work and incur costs 
regarding childcare.
    I find it very difficult to put together the arguments that 
want to allow families to be able to make the right choice for 
them about when they provide care for their own children and 
when they are in the workforce with the idea of putting a work 
requirement on the child tax credit. The point of the child tax 
credit is to ensure that children don't grow up in poverty, and 
we shouldn't be requiring that everybody in the household work.
    I also just have to point out that there is a very 
disturbing inequality with the work requirement on the child 
tax credit in that my understanding is the way it would be 
implemented at the household level. So you would be requiring 
that a single mother works but would not be requiring that a 
married mother works, and that is a gross inequity that we 
should not allow.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Stevenson, very much.
    Let me now defer to the Senator from Utah for his 
questions, Senator Lee.
    Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr.Chairman.
    Ms. Greszler, I would like to start with you, if that is 
all right. Work is something of a foundational component of 
living a happy, healthy, productive life. Research from our 
team here at the Joint Economic Committee's Social Capital 
Project has shown that being out of the labor force is not only 
associated with less income but also poorer social outcomes, 
more physical ailments, and worse emotional well-being. Given 
the benefits associated with work, I think encouraging work is 
important, and discouraging it should be avoided.
    Dr.William McBride, a witness at our previous hearing, 
noted in his research for the Tax Foundation that tax hikes in 
the Build Back Better Act would cost Americans more than 
300,000 jobs. This plan would also remove work incentives in 
the child tax credit and the Dependent Care Credit.
    For mothers and fathers who already have weak ties to the 
labor market, for them in particular, how will they be affected 
by removing these requirements? And rather than giving up on 
work as the primary way to increase living standards, are there 
other policies that you would suggest to increase these 
opportunities for Americans?
    Ms. Greszler. Yes. So, the massive reconciliation package 
has multiple ways in which it discourages work, primarily by 
making work not pay, especially for people who are at the 
margin, and that is at the lower end of the income scale. My 
colleague, Robert Rector, estimated that this proposal would 
add about $8,500 in new benefits to a family that is already 
receiving about $36,000 worth of cash, food, and housing 
benefits. That is not even counting the healthcare and so you 
are creating a situation where individuals can be better off 
not working, and yet we have seen that historically breaking 
cycles of poverty means you need to have an example of work in 
the home. If you have a two-parent home, then, yes, one worker 
could be working. And one could be staying home with a child. 
If it is a single parent, there needs to be that example of 
work there.
    And, in terms of increasing employment, increasing the 
incentive to work, and helping to have more of that in the 
economy, there are many ways that you could do that. One of 
them I think is particularly fruitful during this time--and I 
am looking at women in particular--is more opportunities for 
flexible work, freelancing work, independent work so that it 
doesn't have to be the 9 to 5 job where you have to report to 
the boss and you have to check in and sit at your desk, but 
things that I have seen so many women, my friends included, 
that they are able to do, whether it is in the morning or at 
night, and still be able to care for children.
    We shouldn't be closing doors to opportunities. And that is 
what is in this proposal in many ways, including forcing people 
into those unionized, one-size-fits-all jobs.
    Senator Lee. Right. So, in many instances, you actually 
have Federal law and Federal regulations based on Federal law 
serving as a restriction on those things, and reforms like the 
Working Families Flexibility Act, which would allow America's 
moms and dads to make decisions that better reflect their own 
needs, would help this problem in the same way that this 
legislation would make it worse.
    Ms. Greszler. Absolutely. And your Working Families 
Flexibility Act is one of the best ways because it is 
particularly geared for those lower income, hourly workers. And 
all it does is give them an option: If you want to work 2 extra 
hours this week so that you can take 3 hours off next week, 
that is a choice. Nobody is forcing it. It should absolutely be 
done to help increase that access to paid family leave.
    Senator Lee. Now last month's disappointing jobs growth 
report underscores the uncertainty associated with our slowly 
recovering economy, and at the same time, employers across the 
country are increasingly desperate to find qualified and 
willing workers who are able to fill, you know, more than 10 
million open jobs.
    President Biden's vaccine mandate from my perspective not 
only will but is already making things worse, which is odd 
because it doesn't even exist yet. He hasn't had the decency to 
share it with us. So it can't be challenged in court, can't be 
scrutinized. But people are following it because the interim 
effect of these anticipated daily civil monetary penalties like 
$70,000 per worker per day per violation is causing a lot of 
corporate America to just say we are going to try to guess what 
it is so we are not caught flatfooted. I have heard from 
employers across Utah say they may have to fire as much as 20 
percent of their workforce.
    So the vaccine mandate is just one more example of 
Washington getting in the way of the recovery. And so, if the 
President doesn't reverse course, what will be the effect of 
these policies on Americans' conditions as they approach work?
    Ms. Greszler. And it is not just the loss in jobs. We are 
also talking about a loss in the safety and the health and 
education because these are the people who are being impacted 
most. New York City had to lay off thousands of school workers. 
They have had to lay off thousands of healthcare workers, shut 
down maternity wards. My sister lives in New York, and she had 
one of her young children who had to have an operation. And she 
was told to travel 170 miles to Pittsburgh because the closer 
hospital by them was having staff shortages due to the vaccine.
    So this is absolutely impacting Americans, and I think it 
is very ironic and just wrong that yesterday's heroes are now 
today's villains and are being fired.
    Senator Lee. Unacceptable, un-American, unconstitutional, 
and immoral. Thank you.
    Chairman Beyer. I would like to point out that I heard last 
night that we have 1,042 Virginia children have been 
hospitalized with COVID. And two died 2 days ago.
    Senator Heinrich, the floor is yours.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    And let me start by just saying how grateful I am to have 
had the college degree that my father's one-size-fits-all union 
job made possible.
    I want to talk about New Mexico and childcare. In New 
Mexico, the cost of two children in childcare is about $18,000 
a year. That is a lot less than a lot of other places, I will 
give you. The Build Back Better plan would limit out-of-pocket 
expenses for childcare to 7 percent of a family's income, and I 
know full well what that would mean for my constituents.
    But, Mr. Amarnath, I want to ask you to tell me what it 
would mean, how that could impact the prime-age employment 
rate, and also why that is important.
    Mr. Amarnath. Yeah. So your question really helps to 
highlight an area where the U.S. has been lagging for such a 
long time relative to other advanced economies. So we talk 
about childcare being acceptable and affordable, we look at 
those countries that have actually made a real concerted effort 
to make sure that it is affordable and acceptable. And if that 
means subsidizing the wages and workers to--of childcare to 
make that possible, employment rates are much higher in--as Dr. 
Stevenson also pointed out, prime-age employment rate, which 
adjusts for waging, yes, people are aging into their retirement 
ages or maybe going to school if they are younger, but the 25- 
to 54-year-old cohort, we are talking about employment rates 
that are in the U.S. much lower than most other advanced 
economies. And we should really be asking why that is and what 
is the constraint and what led other countries to race ahead. 
And a big part of that, I would argue, is female employment 
rates have been able to rise because not all work has to be 
done within the household. You actually are able to have that 
flexibility that childcare is not so punitively expensive on 
the market that you have to effectively be at home.
    As I said, if we could take a very stark example of this, 
even with north of the border, Canada has higher employment 
rates, has continued to see higher employment rates, and in a 
country like--in a province like Quebec, which is not really 
maybe known as much, but it is 7 percent more than the U.S. 
That is like a--that is a pretty substantial amount. If we were 
to say that 7 percent decline in the employment rate, if you 
could do something like this, I think we would all should at 
least, like, pay closer attention to this issue.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes, it seems like one of the things we 
all agree on actually, which is surprising that we can all 
agree on something, is that we would like to see more 
participation in the labor force.
    Dr. Stevenson, do work requirements actually get us to that 
goal? And what would the impact of a one-size-fits-all work 
requirement, say for the child tax credit, to be able to get 
that mean for grandparents who are raising, are the primary 
caregivers, and have custody of their grandchildren, which is a 
very common situation in the State of New Mexico.
    Dr. Stevenson. So, I think that it is not going to put 
people back in jobs. What it is going to do is remove cash from 
the household. When you remove cash from the household, you end 
up hurting kids, and you end up reducing labor force 
participation of those kids as they grow up. So you actually 
can end up ultimately having a negative effect by putting a 
work requirement on them.
    I think that it is really important to think hard about how 
people choose when and where to work. We have heard a lot about 
how, you know, a vaccine mandate may lead some people to leave 
a job but because they don't want to get vaccinated. It is 
really important to focus on the number of people who are not 
in jobs rights now because they are afraid of getting COVID and 
afraid of unvaccinated colleagues.
    I want to bring that up because you mentioned grandparents. 
And what we saw was a large decline in labor force 
participation among older workers, an increase in retirement. 
We are not going to be able to push these older workers who are 
fearful of getting sick and potentially dying from COVID back 
into the labor force by putting a work requirement on a child 
tax credit. What we can do is help households make ends meet so 
that they can then think about how to better participate in the 
labor force.
    You know, one of the things we are seeing right now with 
all those quits is people are going into better jobs, better 
jobs that I think they will be able to stick in for longer. And 
that will ultimately also lead to higher labor force 
participation. So getting people not just into any old job but 
into a job that pays a living wage that they feel valued in, 
that they can stick in, allows them to stay for 5 years like we 
have heard that people do when they are in a good job.
    Senator Heinrich. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of 
facilitating other members of the panel, I am going to give the 
rest of my time back.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Senator, very much.
    Now I would like to recognize my friend from Arizona, 
Representative Schweikert.
    Representative Schweikert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Look, I have shared with you a little bit of my 
frustration, having been on the Joint Economic Committee for a 
long time. We can do better on the intellectual credibility of 
what is being handed to us. We are better than much of this 
testimony.
    Just for the record, I thought I might hand you the Federal 
Reserve Bank of St. Louis study from about a couple of weeks 
ago that actually does show the employment differentials of 
States that did cut back or end their extended stint on 
unemployment. And the numbers are actually fairly dramatic.
    I want to talk about this one before I ask to hand it in to 
the record because you mentioned it in your opening testimony. 
We have also the big study, which actually I found fascinating, 
from the four economists, PhDs, at the University of Chicago. 
And I have an absolute fascination and fixation on labor force 
participation numbers. Why did it--was there such an economic 
miracle in 2018 and 2019, particularly being from the desert 
Southwest, you know, my numbers for Hispanic females were 
remarkable. The wage growth was remarkable, without all the 
social engineering that is part of this package. So what 
happened? Why did it work?
    And then this University of Chicago study that sort of 
walks through, saying, you know, there is a line here. You 
know, the decline of employment--in employment and 
consequential earning loss means that child poverty would fall 
about 22 percent, but for severe poverty, it doesn't fall at 
all.
    So the stunning amounts of money and the design of the 
program that is being floated doesn't actually help the very 
people we care about. Maybe it is time we intellectually step 
up our game and start thinking about what works and what 
doesn't work, not just the folklore of that is a Republican 
idea, that is a Democrat idea, and actually think about do we 
actually give a damn about helping people, because the, I mean, 
academic paper after academic paper says, yes, you get some 
effect but for the people you most care about, it doesn't work.
    You actually talked about the paper. Why doesn't it work? 
And what do you think we should do that is different that 
actually would reflect the success, particularly we were having 
in 2019?
    Ms. Greszler. Yes. Well, and we saw in the paper there, you 
quoted, that the deep childhood poverty, that it would have no 
impact on that. And yet we are considering increasing these 
monthly payments up to $1,000, $1,600 a year. That doesn't make 
sense. So what that says is that the furthest low end of the 
income scale, those are the people who are going to lose that 
work connection. And that is where it is most important because 
we know that that is what is crucial to breaking those cycles 
of poverty. You can't make a situation where a family is just 
as well off or better off by not working than by working.
    And so you absolutely have to have those incentives in 
there, and it can't be government micromanaged. Here is 
government job training. Here is government paid family leave. 
Here is government childcare. We saw that what happened after 
the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that included tax cuts on 
corporations, they fed it through to their workers. Some of 
those companies went out, and they polled their workers. What 
do you want? You want higher wages? You want more compensation? 
A lot of this time we want paid family leave. That is why we 
saw a 64 percent increase in paid family leave. We saw a $1,400 
above-trend wage growth in the period after that because those 
tax cuts fed through, and they resulted in workers having 
higher incomes.
    And they also just gave more opportunities out there. 
Employers were willing to invest in their workers with job 
training programs, and the opposite is occurring here because 
you are going to take away from the people who are creating 
jobs and redistribute it in ways that discourage people from 
taking jobs.
    Representative Schweikert. Look, we have lots of good data. 
And it is real math of the miracle numbers. I mean, it was a 
Goldilocks economy that demonstrated once again that supply 
side does actually work, great wealth effects, closing of 
income inequality, minority population seeing wage growth and 
employment growth.
    And I despise storytelling, but I am going to actually 
break my own rule. Great experience. Homeless community in 
Phoenix, we actually do a combined homeless shelter. Helped 
work on it a few years ago. St. Joseph the Worker actually had 
this explosion of people begging, saying, ``We are willing to 
take a chance; send us homeless people because we are so 
desperate for workers.''
    So it is somewhat what was said over here, if you can make 
labor valuable. Almost every one of these proposals being 
offered by the Left devalues labor.
    And, Mr. Chairman, that is my great fear is--we both care. 
My fear is those Left proposals are going to make things much 
worse.
    And, with that, I yield back and would like to also before 
you, you see, hand the documents for the record.
    Chairman Beyer. Without objection, those documents are 
accepted.
    [Articles submitted by Representative Schweikert appears in 
the Submissions for the Record on page 81.]
    Chairman Beyer. And I would suggest that we be careful 
about devaluing any of the experts' testimony because there are 
contradictory studies. There may be one from the Fed. There are 
also those from the University of Chicago, from J.P. Morgan, 
from AP, and others that claim the UI benefits did not create 
slower----
    Representative Schweikert. Actually, Mr. Chairman, knowing 
two of the studies, they were actually before about half of 
these States had actually begun their rollback.
    Chairman Beyer. Let me also point out that claiming that 
the CTC does not work at all for those in extreme poverty, not 
working at all is different from being insufficient to lift 
them out above poverty. It is hard to imagine that $250 and 
$300 per child----
    Representative Schweikert. Mr. Chairman----
    Chairman Beyer [continuing]. has no effect at all.
    Representative Schweikert [continuing]. once again, it is 
the quote from the study. It is not my quote.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you.
    Now let me recognize Mr. Peters from California.
    Representative Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I don't want to spend a lot of time on unemployment 
supplements. You know, we knew we overshot. The risk we took 
was we were overshooting in order to avoid an economic 
disaster. So, if we ended up paying unemployment benefits for a 
little too long, it may have suppressed employment at some 
point. And I think that is good for next time, but that is over 
with. So that is retrospective, and we are not talking about 
extending those right now. So I would put that to bed.
    The other thing about vaccines is, sure, I think probably 
we have heard that vaccines have encouraged some people to 
quit. I am sorry that they don't want to get vaccinated. On the 
other hand, in the face of a pandemic where a million people 
have died, the workforce is not the only public policy we have 
to be concerned about. We have to be concerned about actually 
protecting each other. And so I don't think that rolling back 
the vaccine mandate is the proper way to get at the worker 
shortage that we are facing right now. I don't think that is 
the right strategy.
    One strategy you didn't mention that I am curious about--
and I would ask this for, I guess, for Mr.Amarnath, the role of 
the immigrant workforce when it comes to our labor shortage. I 
mean, one idea about getting more labor is to actually to bring 
more in. And that is what we have done traditionally. Would 
that be a good solution, and what would that do to economic 
growth in general?
    Mr. Amarnath. Okay. I think it is a sort of direct matter, 
immigration leading to higher labor force growth and, thus, 
sort of somewhat mechanically leading to higher upward growth, 
so obviously there. There are areas where we have sort have 
identifiable labor shortages and not just sort of anecdotes in 
terms of manufacturing and construction where you can point to.
    To the extent we can bring people, especially those who 
have actually been working here and done a lot of the essential 
work, that obviously would be beneficial to be able to create a 
more robust workforce.
    Representative Peters. Dr. Stevenson, would you comment on 
that as well, the role of immigration?
    Dr. Stevenson. So I do believe that we are seeing some 
labor market problems that come from the fact that we have not 
had as many foreign workers come in to the country. At the risk 
of enraging some of you, I will give you a story, which is, at 
the University of Michigan, we don't have a lot of foreign 
students on campus. And we definitely see the places where the 
foreign students used to work are having problems hiring 
people.
    There are certainly industries that rely on foreign workers 
that are having a hard time finding people. I think it would be 
really valuable to be thinking in the context of immigration 
reform. This--looking very closely at this question of how 
immigrants support the U.S. labor market and support growth 
because this has certainly been a time with closed borders and 
limited foreign workers.
    Representative Peters. Let me ask you about your testimony 
about economic recovery and employment stability. In my 
district in San Diego, we rely a lot on tourism and 
hospitality. It is a significant part of our economy. What 
would you say about tourism and hospitality? What could 
employers do to increase stability in their workforce when 
these jobs don't always come with benefits and other 
incentives?
    Dr. Stevenson. I think the first thing to say is these jobs 
have become much riskier. These were not risky jobs. In fact, 
when I was a kid, a college student, a young person in my 
twenties, these were fun jobs.
    They are now jobs where, first of all, just the level of 
animosity in the way people are treating each other is making 
these jobs less fun, and the fact that you have to ask people 
to put their mask on has made them less fun.
    It is also pointing to the need for these jobs to just pay 
a living wage. You know, we really need stability in our work, 
and that means being able to be--not rely on a job which may 
lay you off tomorrow, and that is actually one of the real 
things still going on in leisure and hospitality. There are a 
lot of workers who are still at risk and will lose their job 
potentially tomorrow, could be losing their job right now as we 
speak because the pandemic as it goes on is causing--some of 
the tourist industry is struggling to keep afloat. And that is 
the biggest way we will get the tourism industry back on track, 
is to vaccinate more of population.
    My kids would like to go to Disney World again. We are not 
there yet as a country in my perspective. And I think that that 
is why we don't have as many workers back there. I think that 
that it is incredibly important that these jobs become more 
stable, they pay better, and we find a way to make them safer 
than they are right now.
    Representative Peters. Let me just ask you one more 
question about the child tax credit. The idea of a child tax 
credit to provide additional funds for families that have 
children, doesn't that address the ability of parent choice 
because I guess you get money for a child? You can decide to 
use that income to stay home, or you can decide to deploy that 
money to childcare, if childcare exists. In terms of choosing 
policies, isn't that really the most efficient, economically 
sound program?
    Dr. Stevenson. To be clear, there is no work disincentive 
from the child tax credit because, if there is no work 
requirement on it, parents can get access to this money, and 
they have the choice then of what they are going to do. If we 
put a work requirement on it, then you are effectively saying, 
``I am going to give you money to pay the additional costs of 
you going to work.'' If you don't put the work requirement on 
it, you are letting parents choose what is right for their 
family.
    Representative Peters. Right. I think parent choice is 
something we all would like to support.
    And I yield back.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Peters.
    Let me recognize now the Congressman from Kansas, Mr. 
Estes.
    Representative Estes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you for all our witnesses for being here today.
    And, without enough workers, Americans across the country 
will continue the experience of rising prices, longer wait 
times, and shortages. The Kansans I represent are rightfully 
alarmed about the direction of the economy. You know, inflation 
levels are at a level not seen for 30 years, and businesses are 
unable to find enough workers. Instead of searching for 
solutions to make hiring easier, the Biden administration has 
decided to implement a series of policies that create barriers 
and make it harder for businesses to find workers. They have 
even gone so far as to force businesses to fire workers for 
reasons unrelated to their work due to the recent OSHA mandate.
    It is clear that the vaccine mandate will lead to serious 
disruptions across the U.S. economy. That is because it is both 
unreasonable and unaccommodating. There is a recent Washington 
Post poll that found 72 of unvaccinated Americans would quit 
their jobs if their employers forced them to get the vaccine 
without the opportunity for exemptions. The mandate will surely 
lead to more worker shortages across the country, both within 
critical supply chains and within the healthcare industry. The 
administration has estimated that their mandate will apply to 
two-thirds of the workforce.
    Just this week, the American Trucking Associations warned 
the White House that in regards--in response to the vaccine 
mandate, many drivers will likely quit. There is already 80,000 
worker shortages in the trucking industry today, and forcing 
more workers to quit in a time when we desperately need them is 
not the right approach.
    I think it is important to point out that, not only is 
President Biden's order unconstitutional, it does not 
contribute to building a stronger healthcare industry. We are 
seeing hospitals that are already dealing with staffing 
shortages now unable to staff beds as part of the result of the 
Biden mandate. One hospital, of course, as we have all talked 
about, has been forced to put baby deliveries on hold after 
maternity workers quit in protest to the mandate. The reduction 
in healthcare workforce, as caused by the mandate, has 
dramatically lowered capacity to respond to COVID as well as 
other infectious diseases and high-risk events like heart 
attacks and strokes.
    The solution to fix the current record high gap between the 
number of job openings and the number of employed workers--
unemployed workers is not more taxpayer-funded programs but 
policies that finding workers--make it easier for industries.
    Ms. Greszler, President Biden's so-called Build Back Better 
Act would lead to greater upward pressure on prices and further 
disincentivize able-bodied adults to work. If passed, how much 
would the Build Back Better Act accelerate both the inflation 
and labor market crisis we are currently experiencing? And how 
bad could microeconomic conditions become?
    Ms. Greszler. Well, we have heard some estimates in terms 
of potential employment and job losses in the 5- to 8 million 
range. And we really don't know what is going to happen to 
inflation, and there are a lot of factors at play there. But 
certainly Americans have experienced the impact of employers 
not being able to fill their positions and that leading to 
higher prices at the grocery store, at the gas station, on 
pretty much everything that we are purchasing, and also 
shortages, not even being able to get certain things. And then, 
in looking at the Build Back Better Act and just all the rules 
that it is going to put on employers micromanaging everything. 
I mean, when you look over that, it just makes it so difficult, 
you wonder, why would anybody even want to create jobs and why 
would they want to run a business and provide that income and 
that opportunity to individuals when the government is going to 
be the one that is going to tell them when their workers can 
have access to paid family leave? They are going to tell them 
whether or not they have to join a union and therefore breaking 
that ability for the employee and the employer to work 
together. That particularly concerns me among women who like to 
have greater flexibility in the workplace. And they might not 
want the rules that the union is negotiating, or now, being an 
employer, you are going to have to automatically enroll workers 
in a retirement account, even if you don't have one set up for 
them yet, and you are just going to have all of these mandates 
piled on top of one another that just creates an enormous 
burden on employers.
    Representative Estes. You also pointed out that the Green 
New Deal would cost every American $1,991 per year over the 
next decade, or nearly $8,000 per year for a family of four. 
Combined with some of these other ongoing proposals, you note 
that the typical American household will pay about 10,000--they 
would pay about $100,000 over the next decade. So, if passed, 
how does this increasing burden on households affect our 
economic growth?
    Ms. Greszler. Well, it leaves everybody less well off in 
the end. Less income, less opportunity. And I think that it is 
easy to sell a $3.5 trillion package as it is going to provide 
you childcare, it is going to provide you paid family leave, it 
is going to give you a monthly check, it is going to do all 
these things for you. But there are two sides to everything. 
Everybody argues about I want to see the one-handed economist 
because, well, actually there are two realities. And what are 
the costs on the other side of that? And, yes, if you just look 
at some of those things, I added it up, and potentially the 
typical American household would have $100,000 less purchasing 
power in the future in order to tradeoff these things where 
they are going to get what the government gives them instead of 
what they could otherwise go out and decide what they wanted to 
get on their own.
    Representative Estes. Yeah. You noted something very 
important there that the Federal Government can't give any 
money away in a program unless it takes away from a taxpayer to 
begin with.
    Ms. Greszler. And I think that is very important to think 
about here, is we have heard your pockets are deeper than my 
pockets. Your pockets are reaching into the pockets of every 
American and every business owner in order to take money out of 
them to give it back to somebody else. We are not just talking 
about money that is growing off of trees here. Even if it is 
monthly child payments, that money has to come out of economy 
somewhere. And it comes out of the paychecks and the incomes of 
families who are parents, who do have children. So it is not 
just all a net gain to be sending money because it is coming 
from the Federal Government.
    Representative Estes. Thank you. And I yield back.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Pocan.
    Representative Pocan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I 
appreciate it.
    And thank you for all the witnesses for being here.
    I am not going to refer to, I guess, studies. I am going to 
do it from practical experience. I am a 34--almost 34-year 
owner of a small business. Started it when I had hair. I was 23 
years old. It has been a while back. And, you know, I talk to a 
lot of small business people because those are the people I 
have known for most of my adult life. One of my largest 
employers in my district is in California and Wisconsin. He has 
6,000 employees. He told me recently he was up to 70 percent of 
allowed back on vaccination rate, and an employee came in with 
COVID. And he decided he was going change that. So he did all 
sorts of initiatives. Got up to over 99 percent and, finally, 
at the end, had to fire 40 people out of 6,000. That is about 
two-thirds of 1 percent. So those studies that say 20 percent 
of people will be fired for not doing mandates, I am just 
telling you that the people I talk to in Wisconsin don't 
necessarily have that study, but they have the practical 
experience of that not being real, as I mentioned that.
    I also belong to three Chambers of Commerce. Very active in 
a number of business issues. We had the SBA Administrator in 
Wisconsin a few months back. And I invited all the different 
business groups to have a meeting with her. And my largest 
chamber, the Madison Chamber of Commerce--Madison is about 
250,000 people. They and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and 
Commerce, which is one of the most conservative business groups 
of everybody else I invited in my State, said they just did a 
survey of members and how the chamber said that the number one 
issue blocking people going to employment was childcare.
    And one of the initiatives that we are trying to do and I 
think is going to be in the Build Back Better agenda is this 
childcare initiative to reduce it to 7 percent. And, much like 
Mr. Swenson-Klatt, as a small business person, I have got 
someone starting Monday as well. That will bring us back full 
complement pre-COVID. But their childcare they just got is 
costly, quite a bit by the percent. And this would be a game 
changer.
    Dr. Stevenson, just from that practical thing, you are 
going to give me maybe the scientific side of it. I am going to 
give you the practical side. If I am being told by employers in 
my area that the number one barrier to getting people hired 
right now--and we certainly all have that experience--is 
childcare, can you just talk a drop more about how important 
that initiative of 7 percent of your income covering childcare 
would mean?
    Dr. Stevenson. It is a practical reality that you cannot 
pay more for childcare than you are being paid for your own 
job. That is just a limit that people have. Childcare is more 
expensive than college for many families. And, yet, we spend a 
lot of time wondering how families are going to pay for college 
and college tuition. And we leave them on their own, 
particularly when they are younger, with lower incomes than 
they might have when their kids are old enough for college, and 
we tell them to figure childcare out on their own. A lot of 
parents simply can't do it. They try to cobble together plans. 
They might use a network of relatives or neighbors, and some 
amount of paid childcare, but they are running into troubles.
    We are seeing upward pressure on wages at the bottom end of 
the income distribution. This is actually a good thing. This 
means that many people who are our lowest wage workers are 
going to be earning a living wage. But childcare providers are 
struggling because, if they pay more than $12 an hour to keep 
up with what Amazon's warehouse is paying, what Starbucks is 
paying, they have to pass those costs on to parents, who are 
themselves not earning much more than the childcare workers 
themselves.
    That is going to cause--as childcare workers' wages will go 
up whether you do something or not, because wages at the bottom 
are going up. As those wages go up, people will drop out of the 
labor force because they are unable to pay for that childcare. 
That is the reality. You need to step in and try to support 
that.
    And just one other thing to add to that is the research 
does show that every dollar we invest in young children comes 
back to the taxpayer in terms of $7 to $8 later on. Somebody 
does have to pay for these costs. It turns out they are paid 
for by increased productivity of those kids as they grow up.
    Representative Pocan. Thank you. I will never forget, too, 
when the Affordable Care Act got in place, I had a childcare 
provider in my district stop me in the grocery store and cry 
because she finally had health insurance for the first time. So 
I appreciate that.
    Mr. Swenson-Klatt, you are like me, someone who I spent 
that many years and how you spent a long time building your 
business. You specifically brought up family medical leave, 
paid family medical leave. Can you just talk a bit more about 
how that would help you both in attracting employees and being 
able to grow with your business?
    Mr. Swenson-Klatt. Thank you. As I mentioned, I am 
partnering with a housing program. It is a housing program that 
houses young adults who have been homeless, 18- to 24-year-
olds. And, in that population, as we work with them in 
internship programs, you can tell there is a lot of health 
disparities at work. So we are the kind of place that is 
supportive. We create flexible schedules. We do the extra 
little mile to help someone with a rough day, that leave time 
in many cases, a chance for a person to just take care of 
themselves.
    Mental health issues are a huge piece of young adult 
experience right now. If the pandemic isn't kind of a wake-up 
call, we should be aware. I have a lot of young adults who work 
for me for whom it has been a really tough set of years. Mental 
health issues are really challenging. Sometimes you need that 
time off.
    The flexibility that I had during the pandemic to back into 
a program that was available to pay for people to be away 
allowed me to just keep open. I wasn't panicking because I knew 
they were going to keep their job. They were going to come back 
when they are feeling a little better, back on their feet. We 
would be flexible as a staff, support each other and get back 
to where we needed to be. That kind of predictability for my 
staff and for me means I can just keep going forward. Before 
that, it was very hit or miss. And I just miss those--that 
possibility again. I don't look forward to the days when it 
is--someone needs a couple weeks, and I just have no way to 
support them. And, in a couple weeks, for the young folks I 
work with, that is rent; that is food. It is back into the 
instability.
    Representative Pocan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate 
your time.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you very much.
    I recognize the gentlewoman from Washington, Ms. Herrera 
Beutler.
    Representative Hererra Beutler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And, just to clarify of our last witness, I just want to 
make sure I understood that correctly. The ability to do the 
paid family leave and to provide the sick leave or just mental 
health time for your employees was as a result of the payments 
because of the COVID replacement money, correct?
    Mr. Amarnath. Yes.
    Representative Hererra Beutler. So you weren't able to 
provide that prior to the pandemic. Okay. Thank you. I wanted 
to clarify that. Paid family leave, childcare is something I 
have actually worked on quite a bit here in Congress. I believe 
we need to find ways to address this issue. Whether we like it 
or not, it is something we need to address.
    But I also am challenged because it is also true that money 
comes from somewhere. And it is not all--you know, I believe in 
investing in children, but not all investments are the same. 
You know, people talk about pre-K, and pre-K is important, but 
the quality of the pre-K is really the thing that makes the 
difference when you talk about getting $7 back with a $1 in. It 
is not just warehoused childcare; it is investment in children. 
So I do want to make sure we are not blanketing that.
    And, you know, I supported the legislation last year 
strongly to replace--really, when private companies got shut 
down because of a public interest--the Federal Government or 
the States or whatever shut you down because we were trying to 
protect people against this pandemic. It was through no fault 
of your own that you were getting shut down. And so that relief 
payment to me was similar--I compared it to eminent domain, 
like when there is taking of private property for a public 
good, there needs to be just recompense, and that is how I 
viewed that.
    As we move forward in the policy, we are not in that 
situation anymore. And I am all for innovative ideas and 
solutions that help us get to where a small or midsize business 
can compete for that labor force by offering robust benefits. 
But the Build Back Better plan has frustrated me because it is 
not innovative or creative. It is just ``let's tax more and 
spend more.'' Well, that doesn't last.
    And I do think what we saw, I was here pre--during the 
Obama years and Trump years. And I remember during the Obama 
years being told we are never going to grow again, like, our 
economy is never going to grow. I think, when he left office, 
we were at 1--1.6 percent GDP growth. And we were told we will 
never see a 3-percent growth again in our economy; those days 
are gone. And, bam, we cut taxes, much to a lot of people's 
frustration, and we saw real wages grow among almost every 
recorded class, right? In fact, higher among American people 
who were new to the workforce, like lower wage workers, 
minorities. I mean, single mothers saw more money back. So I do 
think there needs to be a more creative approach than just 
``let's throw more money at it.''
    Having said that, and, Ms. Greszler--I am probably 
butchering that, and I am sorry. Mine gets butchered all the 
time. I wanted to ask about small businesses and their impact 
and supply chains. Now I know, I think in your testimony, you 
talked about union impacts in terms of, like, supply chains, 
but what are the things that we can be doing to help businesses 
on the regulatory end or the supply chain end so that they are 
not wasting time and money on that and maybe they have more 
flexibility with their employees? Could you speak to that?
    Ms. Greszler. Yeah. That just has to do with breaking down 
those barriers and getting rid of regulations that are in the 
way of preventing employers from doing what they would 
otherwise do, being able to work directly with their employees 
and to be able to get things moving. Getting enough people into 
the door and who are willing to work to begin with.
    And, if I could just briefly comment on the whole childcare 
and paid family leave because I do think that, across the 
board, we want to be helping people who are in need. And we 
want to be helping them in a way that lifts them up. And 
absolutely people should have access to paid family leave, and 
childcare is very important. But, if the goal is it to help the 
people who are in need, then why is there a proposal that is 
going to use most of the money for paid family leave to pay 
employers who are already providing it to keep providing it? 
That is not going to help small businesses because that is 
going to let those employers otherwise further increase their 
wages. And, if we care about childcare, why do we have a plan 
that is going to give a couple in D.C. that makes $340,000 a 
year $30,000 worth of childcare subsidies? That is not helping 
anybody enter into the labor force.
    Representative Herrera Beutler. Is this helping people in 
southwest Washington----
    Ms. Greszler. No.
    Representative Herrera Beutler. Who don't make $300,000 
plus a year, who don't have college degrees but are still 
making it work, still need help. You are right: it is diverting 
assets.
    Ms. Greszler. Exactly.
    Representative Herrera Beutler. Be creative.
    Ms. Greszler. Let's look at the existing funding that is 
out there for--Head Start is one example, $10,000 per year. Why 
not let families take that to a provider of their choice? And I 
did just want to briefly challenge this notion about these 8 to 
9 percent returns. That is a tiny boutique study six decades 
ago. And, even the author of that study, he said, yes, there 
are 8 to 9 percent returns for particularly disadvantaged 
children, and he said: But you know what hasn't been estimated 
very well is the return of investment of a parent in a child? 
He said: If I had to guess, that would be a 30 to 40 percent 
return. And so anything I would say, please, don't make us look 
like Quebec because, yes, they significantly increased the 
labor force participation of mothers with young children, but 
they did it at the expense of children and families. They had 
terrible outcomes in terms of social, mobile abilities, health 
outcomes, worst parenting outcomes, even higher crime rates 
when those children were teenagers. That is not something we 
want to mimic.
    Representative Hererra Beutler. Thank you.
    My time has expired. I appreciate it, Chairman.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you very much.
    I now recognize the Congresswoman from Columbus, Ohio, Ms. 
Beatty.
    Representative Beatty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you to our witnesses today.
    Sitting here trying to digest and listen to a lot of 
scientific, practical, somewhat biased opinions, as well. We 
have heard a lot about the Build Back Better and what it will 
or won't do. And childcare, I do agree with my colleague that 
we should make an investment in our children. And here is what 
I know: Depending on where you live in this wonderful America 
in raising your children, it is about quality childcare. And 
what I do know is, if you can't afford quality childcare to 
make an investment in it, then most mothers, parents, fathers 
will put their children before anything else. And then they 
won't be able to go to work.
    If we are talking about the economy and growing the 
workforce, we have heard a lot about the vaccination, Mr. 
Chairman. And, when people talk about the OSHA ruling of 
employees who have 100 employees or more and the mask, wearing 
the masks, it is ``or be tested every week.'' And I can tell 
you a major hospital in my district said it was worth every 
penny that they had to spend on the test because keeping people 
healthy allows them to go to work.
    So, if you are not tested and you don't know--we had this, 
in this very Chambers, people touting that they weren't going 
to wear a mask; they weren't getting vaccinated. Some of those 
same people then tested positive and affected other people.
    And then what I do know is, if you miss 10 or 14 days of 
work on some jobs, you will lose your job.
    Here is the other thing I know: For us to talk about the 
economy and talk about vaccination and not wearing a mask or 
thinking that the President shouldn't be agreeing with this 
rule, let me remind you, I went out there to the National 
Cemetery: 700,000 people have died because of COVID-19. You 
want to talk about the economy and talk about whether we should 
wear a mask or be tested? 700,000 people have died. We want to 
talk about looking like Quebec and what we are going to do? And 
we come in this hearing and question and challenge the 
difference between being tested or wearing mask and what it 
does? Clearly, you know I have some feelings about that, 
whether practical or scientific, people are dying. Thank 
goodness we have an OSHA ruling that says wear a mask or be 
tested.
    So we know that, as we talk about the Build Back Better 
plan, which I think is bold--I think it is visionary, and I 
think it is going to make a difference in how we grow the 
economy, how we balance an investment in our communities and in 
our Nation. We talk about the economy. So let me go to a 
question. Mr. Skanda Amarnath.
    Mr. Amarnath. Yes, Skanda.
    Representative Beatty. Okay. And also Dr. Stevenson.
    I have a question, and I will start with you Mr. Amarnath. 
In your testimony, you focused on the benefits of tight labor 
markets and how that can have an effect on witnesses. I wanted 
to ask you about the impact of a tight labor market and what it 
would have on the racial gap in the unemployment rate. 
Historically, we know that Black Americans' unemployment rate 
is double the unemployment rate of our White Americans. How do 
you think or what do you think about the tight labor markets 
effect on the racial gap in unemployment and what policies can 
break this cycle?
    Mr. Amarnath. Thank you. So I--the gap between unemployment 
rates and the gap between, called employment rates, employment-
to-population ratios, White persons to Black persons, there has 
been this sort of complacency systematically to say, oh, the 
gap is structural in a way that we can't influence through just 
ordinary fiscal policy, monetary policy, just whatever Congress 
can do. There has to be some sort of secret to unlocking that. 
But, actually, as we find, this is a very cyclical process. So, 
as you get the unemployment rate lower, as you get the 
employment rates higher, it actually benefits most particularly 
those who are--who have been systematically and structurally 
marginalized. And so we see that Black employment rates rise 
relative to White employment rates. We have actually seen that 
they are getting closer and closer [Inaudible] Black employment 
to population ratio and White employment to population ratio. 
And we have to--if we really want these gaps to converge, we 
are going to have to keep investing and keep sort of taking an 
affirmative approach to make sure we are growing the economy 
and bringing in those people who tend to be the first ones laid 
off during recessions and kind of cruelly marginalized and only 
brought back very slowly typically.
    So I think it is important for us to keep this recovery 
going as fast as we can so they can bring back those people.
    Representative Beatty. Thank you. My time is up, but thank 
you because I think that also supports the Build Back Better 
plan.
    And, Ms. Stevenson, I just want to say thank you for 
allowing us to take a look at the challenges that we are having 
in childcare. And I certainly agree with you that it will have 
an impact on our employment.
    Thank you. And I yield back.
    Chairman Beyer. And, Ms. Beatty, if you care to stay for a 
second round, we will probably pursue that in another 10 
minutes.
    And now let me recognize the distinguished Senator from 
Arizona, Senator Kelly.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Amarnath, thank you for testifying here today. Thank 
you to all of you for being here.
    A few months ago, I helped to craft the bipartisan 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which passed the Senate 
in August. And I hope to see it pass the House soon. This is a 
good bill. It makes historic investments in our Nation's 
critical infrastructure, improving our roads, bridges, drinking 
water, ports of entry, and other things. All of these 
investments are going to create millions of good-paying jobs. 
Many of them require high skills. Many of them are technical. 
We need to make sure that people have these skills to fill 
these jobs, especially since, as we have heard today, there are 
jobs already waiting to be filled.
    Could you talk about the benefit of investing in training 
programs to ensure workers have the skills they need to fill 
newly created jobs and how to best utilize these programs to 
help with the skills mismatch that we are facing right now?
    Mr. Amarnath. So I think the investments in workforce 
training, especially in this increasingly tighter labor market, 
are especially essential because these are in industries that 
had a very long period of, call it, very cool underinvested 
period. Think about construction, for example, as being an area 
where construction jobs were abundant before the Great 
Recession. And then we had a sort of long decade in which we 
did not see the sort of requisite employment and investment. 
And so now we are faced with shortages in construction, 
manufacturing, maintenance jobs. These are areas of blue collar 
work that is also being--that we may have some level of 
persistent investment to be able to ensure we have a workforce 
that is stable and able to actually address the challenges of 
an economy that is recovering, and there obviously are sort of 
growing pains right now. We see supply chain problems, 
logistics, bottlenecks. And part of the challenge here is we 
need to sort of rise to the occasion of being able to bring in 
a record amount of goods through our ports, be able to produce 
a record amount of goods within the U.S. economy itself. And so 
I think that is going to be critical to have that force to make 
sure that we have the capacity going forward and that the 
growing pains we see now are not growing pains we are going to 
see in subsequent years, that we actually do have the capacity. 
We do have the workforce that is tailored to meeting the 
material needs of our citizenry.
    Senator Kelly. How do we build that capacity?
    Mr. Amarnath. I think that part of it has to be a 
combination of identifying those areas of--especially I think 
construction and manufacturing are most instructive, where we 
do see both evidence--people talk about job openings. We are 
also seeing wage growth has also picked up in those areas. We 
have also seen that there is an attempt to at least hire 
aggressively, but it is not necessarily easy to hire people who 
have oftentimes moved to other sectors over time, and we need 
to draw them back in. And the training costs especially are--if 
we can burden share on that, especially within the government 
and the private sector, it would actually be beneficial to both 
sides ultimately to able to have a trained workforce. And these 
are very specified skills for these industries, and it is not 
necessarily the case that, if we kind of let a big recession 
and not even try to attempt to have a strong recovery, those 
jobs won't be in demand to the same degree. And that is part of 
the reason we got to this point where we do have labor 
shortages, is that we have kind of systematically not taken as 
affirmative a set of ambitions around sort of fiscal policy and 
especially around infrastructure investment.
    Senator Kelly. Do you think we can, assuming we get this 
legislation passed, get programs funded where we are poised to 
spend hundreds of billions of dollars on critical 
infrastructure, do you think we could build the workforce we 
need to complete these projects?
    Mr. Amarnath. I think so. I think it is a worthwhile 
investment, especially when you are not just from--people want 
to work, and there are a lot of businesses in these sectors who 
now see a very clear need to hire. And there obviously are 
frictions. That is an area where government can do a lot of 
good for both sides.
    Senator Kelly. In Arizona, we have incredible community 
colleges and workforce training programs. And, you know, these 
programs can build the workforce that we need. It is just a 
matter of finding the individuals, getting them through the 
door, getting them the training they need, getting them 
connected with the employers. I think we can do this. I do also 
think that we, like anything, we need to have a plan.
    Thank you.
    And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the remainder of my time.
    Chairman Beyer. Senator, thank you very much.
    Now I want to recognize the Senator--I don't know if he is 
the senior Senator, but he got more votes from Georgia, Senator 
Warnock.
    Senator Warnock. Because my last name begins with a W and 
Senator Ossoff's begins with an O, I am the junior Senator. 
Imagine that.
    Thank you, Chairman Beyer. And I am glad to be here to be a 
part of this hearing.
    People have had to make really hard decisions throughout 
the pandemic when it comes to their jobs and protecting 
themselves and their families and their communities. I don't 
think we have taken stock really of the trauma visited upon all 
of us at varying levels as a result of this pandemic. And not 
everybody has had the privilege of working remotely. I think 
especially about our essential workers. That is a term that 
emerged during the pandemic, the people who literally risked 
their lives stocking grocery store shelves and working in other 
facilities, in hospitals, in some cases.
    We call them essential workers. Often they don't make an 
essential wage. They don't earn essential benefits. Leading 
into the pandemic, only about 9 percent of the lowest wage 
earners in the country were able to work from home.
    Dr. Stevenson, can you speak to how policies that support 
the financial freedom of working families like the child tax 
credit, the largest tax cut for working families in American 
history, how this might affect the growth and stability of the 
labor market?
    Dr. Stevenson. Yes. Thank you for that question. I mean--I 
think the most important thing that the child tax credit does 
is eliminates or dramatically reduces the amount of children 
living in poverty. And what that does for children is ensures 
that they eat better, that they learn better, and that they are 
better able to grow into adults who will ultimately be 
productive.
    But it also gives a little bit more flexibility to the 
families to make the right choices for them. Families shouldn't 
be stuck in a situation where, if something happens, we have 
all been there, where a kid breaks an arm or a leg, and you 
have to keep going to work, but who is going to take care of 
them?
    Giving them just a little more breathing room allows them 
to make better decisions. And we saw in the pandemic that 
people got up and went to jobs that could kill them, but the 
financial support we gave has allowed them to move into better 
jobs as we have emerged out the pandemic, to make requests for 
higher wages, for more flexibility.
    Flexibility doesn't just mean working at home. It means 
knowing what your schedule is more than 24 hours in advance so 
you can plan for childcare. It means trying to ask for working 
around your childcare schedule so that you can actually go to 
work and do your job. These kinds of demands that workers are 
now currently making are being facilitated by the fact that 
you, Congress, in its wisdom has chosen to give a little bit 
more of a cushion to families so that they can make better 
choices for them and their children.
    Senator Warnock. Families for whom wages are low and the 
cost of childcare is high.
    Dr. Stevenson. Yes.
    Senator Warnock. And this just gives them some space. So 
you don't believe this is a negative impact on the economy.
    Dr. Stevenson. I do not believe it is an negative impact. 
In fact, I think it is a very strongly positive impact on the 
economy. I think that most people want to be able to work, 
provide more for their children, but they need a little bit of 
a buffer because, when things start to fall apart, what we see 
is people can have a really hard time getting themselves out of 
the worst situations. So that is particularly true for low-wage 
workers.
    Senator Warnock. And, similarly, we have heard folks in 
recent days say that the unemployment insurance that we 
provided is what is contributing to this issue. And some have 
argued that taking away unemployment payments was necessary to 
get people back to work. But the evidence that I have seen 
isn't there. In States like Georgia, that ended benefits early, 
there was not a significant difference in the number of jobs 
created in comparison to other States that kept the benefits. 
Further, a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found 
that even though women--women with small children made up just 
10 percent of the prepandemic workforce; they are almost 25 
percent of the COVID-related job loss. So these are folks who 
are responding to this very issue that you are talking about. 
It is not that parents don't want to work. Raising a small 
child--and I have two small children--during a pandemic without 
reliable childcare or other supports is a full-time job, and it 
makes it nearly impossible to work.
    Mr. Amarnath, does limiting Americans' access to financial 
support increase our overall economic growth?
    Mr. Amarnath. I think it quite clearly is the opposite from 
the past 18 months. We have some pretty clear data about how 
income supports ultimately preserve consumption, preserve jobs, 
preserve the ability for businesses to stay open and not have 
to go. And that is true especially from the household side with 
unemployment insurance.
    So there was obviously a lot talked about disincentives, 
how this was actually stopping people from entering. And we had 
a few different ways we could actually game out why this was 
actually happening. We decide whether the incentives, how much 
of an effect it was having. We could look at the cutoff in 
September for a lot of States; we actually kept it in place. 
And did job growths speed up as we got closer to September and 
through September? No. If you look at the States--we have 
weekly data for States that cut it off early. Did we see a 
difference in terms how quickly their employment rate 
accelerated through the early cutoff? And we didn't see that 
either. That is a reference to what Dr. Stevenson noted in her 
testimony, that Arin Dube has--from the weekly data, we don't 
see that.
    And then we can also just look at, across the income 
spectrum, did we see that when we gave a fixed payment? Did it 
actually translate into people at the lower end of the income 
spectrum? Did job growth slow for those who are at the lowest 
wage level? That we didn't see either.
    So we have all these different ways to triangulate and 
actually evaluate this. And I am sure there are obviously ways 
we can keep going back and forth, but on the other side of 
ledger, that income helped support consumption for a lot of 
people who otherwise would have had to cut back drastically. 
And that is a really important thing, the share of people who 
would have had to face a big financial loss in terms a lack of 
a employment, who didn't have to go through that. There is 
pretty clear data, J.P. Morgan has evaluated people's financial 
balances across the income spectrum. And there are a number of 
people who would have faced a really big financial downturn 
because of the loss of employment that didn't have to. And that 
meant that they could also be engaged in the economic activity 
that was supportive of their own standard of living and the 
standard of living of others.
    Senator Warnock. Thank you so much.
    I often say the right thing to do is often the smart thing 
do as well. And this gives us insight about how to grow the 
economy in a way that embraces all of us, especially 
hardworking middle class people, the working poor.
    Thank you so much.
    Chairman Beyer. Senator, thank you very much.
    Ninety percent of the Joint Economic Committee is just 
showing up. So we are going to do a second round, and you are 
welcome to stay.
    Senator Warnock. They are dragging me to the next thing.
    Chairman Beyer. I understand. So, if my friend, Mr. 
Schweikert, comes back or anyone else, we would be happy to 
welcome them.
    Let me just start a short second round.
    Dr. Stevenson, there was a Heritage report on September 30, 
just 7 weeks ago, that said, quote: ``The proposed subsidies 
for full-time center-based childcare would arguably subtract 
from the benefits of a loving resourceful family by reducing 
parenting and increasing paid time in the labor force, 
particularly for mothers.''
    At the same time, Ms. Greszler talked about the child tax 
credit, the $250 and $300 payments are unfortunate because they 
have encouraged mothers, parents to go back into the workforce. 
You are a mom of two. Should that loving resourceful family be 
reserved just for wealthy families?
    Dr. Stevenson. I appreciate you asking that question, and I 
feel strongly no. It should not be reserved just for wealthy 
families. There is, obviously, a strong back and forth between 
a desire to encourage work, which I think we are all in 
agreement--everybody here wants to see people who can work, 
work. But there are times when parents do need to be at home. 
What we are looking at is making childcare affordable so that 
parents can make the right choice for themselves.
    And I think there are a lot of parents that, unfortunately, 
find themselves in a situation where childcare is so 
unaffordable that they are unable to do it. Center-based 
childcare is not just been childcare; it is also about 
learning. The pandemic has shown us that learning and childcare 
are two sides of the same coin. When we send our kids to K 
through 12 education, we are not just sending them to learn, we 
are also sending them to someone else who is going to be taking 
care of them while we work. Center-based childcare also 
provides both early learning and care that allows parents to 
work.
    I think the subsidies there give parents a choice. They 
don't force anyone to do anything, unlike a work requirement on 
child tax credits.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you.
    Mr. Amarnath, you talk about the skills gap myth that the 
differential in unemployment rates between those with a college 
education and those without has actually narrowed over time. 
But we have been talking about the skills gap for a long time, 
you know, the 10 million jobs, 7 million whatever people out of 
work because they don't have the right things. Can you explore 
that?
    Mr. Amarnath. Sure. So a little bit of a nuance, but I 
think when we look at college employment rates and those of 
high school diploma, there is a differential and people say 
that is something that is so structural there is no way to be 
able to get past a certain level of employment for those who 
don't have beyond a high school diploma. And this was 
especially a prominent argumentation command of the Great 
Recession that all these construction workers can't be employed 
doing something else unless it takes a lot of time and cost, 
and it is going to create a lot of inflation.
    As we saw in 2015 onwards, that that gap narrowed. And that 
gap narrowed as the labor market tightened, and there was--
demand had slowly recovered whereas, right now, we see, 
especially when we are kind of going into overdrive with the 
current recovery relative to those previous recoveries--we can 
benchmark it against that--we do see that there is a demand for 
a lot of that type of labor that has been highly cyclical, that 
was probably not as stable a job previously, and we are trying 
to make a lot of those essential jobs, whether they are 
manufacturing, construction, maintenance--these are areas where 
there has been a lack of stability over the years, and that is 
part of the reason that those jobs may have been otherwise done 
by people who did not have a college degree, could be good 
paying jobs under the right conditions, especially now if we 
sort of subsidize training, are able to actually bring people 
in. So I think the skills gap itself is a prediction of who is 
employed and who is employable. There is obviously a role 
government can play in facilitating that process, but the 
notion that this is some hard constraint as opposed to 
something that we can work through, I guess that is the way I 
would frame it from here, which is there are areas where there 
is probably room to do more. But these are always challenges 
that always exist that, at some level, persistent effort can 
bring people in. And we shouldn't write off people just because 
their educational attainment levels are different or only the 
people with a college degree are somehow able to find gainful 
employment that pays a good wage.
    Chairman Beyer. This ties in really nicely, although 
uncertainly, with the whole notion of retraining workers. In an 
economy where we celebrate creative destruction, whether it is 
driven by technology or by trade or anything else, what do we 
do with those coal workers in southwest Virginia, for example? 
It is a challenge.
    Mr. Amarnath. I think in the case of--there is a tendency 
to sort of say that people have to switch from drastically into 
new jobs, somehow people have to go learn to code or 
construction workers need to become nurses, which was a common 
claim in 2010 and 2011.
    Actually, I would take strong issue with that. And we are 
seeing that part of the reason is we did not take the recovery 
seriously enough the last time around, at least into the 
policies that were implemented. And, this time around, we are 
seeing that there are job openings in a lot of these areas that 
were supposedly written off. Manufacturing jobs are actually in 
high demand right now. And that is a product of how we actually 
craft policy, but they create the demand and the supply for the 
workforce itself that support it. That is important.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you.
    Dr. Stevenson, there is a fascinating article in today's 
Atlantic by Derek Thompson on this exact subject. And he talks 
about how the ``great resignations,'' quote-unquote, seem to be 
accelerating, along with the remote work revolution and the 
knowledge economy. But let me quote directly. I would love your 
thoughts on this, especially with your Council of Economic 
Advisers background. Quote: Much of the labor force seems to be 
participating in a kind of distributed protest against the 
status quo of work in America, and, quote, this may be a 
pivotal turning point in the relationship between labor and 
capital.
    Is all this overstated?
    Dr. Stevenson. I don't think that it is overstated. You 
know, the labor's share of income has been declining for the 
last 20 to 30 years. When I was a graduate student, I was 
taught that that thing is stable, that it never changes, that 
what workers get is always sort of roughly the same share, even 
as GDP grows. And yet we have seen this decline that has been 
function of big companies that rely on less labor becoming a 
greater share of the economy and workers with low skills being 
treated really like they are disposable. What we see, you know, 
if you look at the industries that are hurting the most today, 
those are the industries that tend to have very, very high 
turnover in the best of times and not just because workers are 
quitting but because they let them go.
    ``Oh, there is no demand; don't can come in today.''
    ``But I was on the schedule; I arranged childcare.''
    ``It doesn't matter; we don't need you.''
    That kind of treatment workers have been putting up with 
for a long time. When I was on the Council of Economic 
Advisers, we brought together employers and software 
manufacturers who made scheduling software and said, what is 
going on? Why can't you just make shifts work a little bit 
better for people so that they can plan their childcare better? 
And the response from the software developers was: ``We can if 
that is what employers want.''
    So the employers have to want it. And the way for them to 
want it is to find they have to work a little bit harder to get 
workers. And that is what we are seeing in the labor market 
today. And that collective movement, in effect what I have 
called a national collective bargaining moment, is leading 
workers to demand more and get more.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you very much. Anybody else want--I 
am just kidding--in any case, thank you very much.
    Ms. Greszler, Mr. Swenson-Klatt, Mr. Amarnath, Dr. 
Stevenson, I really appreciate you hanging in.
    We are going to get thrown out of the room in 11 minutes. I 
am really grateful. It has been a wonderful discussion, and we 
actually had many people here for their 5 minutes, which was 
very helpful.
    So understanding how create a policy environment that 
encourages the creation of well-paying high-quality safe jobs, 
including all the perspectives, it is a really critical issue 
for Congress, for business, for workers. The pandemic certainly 
has highlighted some of the structural challenges holding back 
labor force participation. And the current demand for strong 
workers gives us an opportunity to really explore this and get 
people back into the labor force.
    Thank you for your contributions. Thank you to my 
colleagues.
    The record will remain open for three business days, and 
this hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., Wednesday, October 27, 2021, the 
hearing was adjourned.]

                       SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

         Prepared statement of Hon. Donald Beyer Jr., Chairman,
                        Joint Economic Committee
    One of the most important things we can do as a Congress is to help 
build a policy environment that encourages the creation of well-paying, 
high-quality, safe jobs. Jobs that allow Americans to support 
themselves and their families. To create opportunities that provide 
workers both a steady paycheck and the ability to care for loved ones 
when they are in need.
    Ensuring workers can navigate work and care responsibilities is 
crucial to boosting overall productivity and advancing long-term and 
robust economic growth which benefits all of us.
    The purpose of this hearing is to examine the barriers to labor 
force participation why it is that certain workers have been unable to 
rejoin the workforce and how policymakers can help address this trend.
    Despite the strength of our Nation's ongoing recovery in which the 
pace of new jobs created has been steady and robust, with almost 5 
million Americans returning to work under President Biden the uneven 
return to the workforce we are witnessing raises some concerns. It is 
particularly troublesome to note that women comprise nearly two out of 
three of the workers who have dropped out of the labor force since the 
beginning of the pandemic.
    To understand the current situation, it is useful to look at 
preexisting trends in U.S. labor force participation: After increasing 
dramatically over the second half of the 20th century, women's labor 
force participation peaked in 2000, and has declined since then. The 
reason for much of this decline has been the lack of structural support 
for women's full participation in the economy, such as paid leave and 
affordable and accessible child care.
    The pandemic highlighted these underlying structural challenges 
confronting our care infrastructure. Women remain the members of their 
families most often responsible for a greater share of care work.
    Now, facing the burden of inadequate and unaffordable child care, 
the impossible choice between caring for a sick loved one or getting a 
paycheck, or pandemic-related disruptions of schools, many women have 
been unable to return to the workplace. If we do not take action to 
better support women returning to work, we may experience prolonged 
periods of worker shortages that will hurt our Nation's economy.
    As a small business owner for over four decades, I have seen first-
hand how paid leave is important for supporting both small businesses 
and workers. It is inevitable that workers need to take time off to 
care for themselves or for a loved one, but only 23 percent of American 
workers have access to paid family leave. Unfortunately, the lower-wage 
workers who are least able to afford to take time away from work to 
care for a sick child or relative are also the workers least likely to 
get paid leave from their employer. A universal paid leave program 
would allow parents to look for work with the knowledge that they could 
care for their kids without losing their paycheck. It would also allow 
employers to be able to retain experienced workers who need to take 
leave without having to pay for the leave out of their own pocket.
    The good news we can take from the current strong demand for 
workers is that we know from the recent past that when there is strong 
demand for workers, they do return to the labor force. Under President 
Obama, the U.S began the longest period of continuous job growth in 
modern history. The tightening of the labor market created 
opportunities for millions of previously marginalized workers to rejoin 
the workforce, and drove up wages, particularly among lower-wage 
earners.
    So while the coronavirus pandemic rocked the labor market and 
pushed the labor force participation rate to lows not seen in decades, 
the hot labor market before the coronavirus pandemic demonstrated that 
sidelined workers can be brought back into the labor force. This offers 
us a useful example as we look to address the current challenges facing 
workers.
    But as helpful as the strong demand for workers can be in pulling 
people back into the labor force, we have seen that if we want to make 
a meaningful improvement in labor force participation we must address 
existing gaps in workforce supports that help workers navigate both 
their jobs and care responsibilities.
    Workers have made significant progress in the past year, with 
almost 5 million Americans returning to work under President Biden and 
the unemployment rate dropping to 4.8 percent in September, beating 
expectations. Nonetheless, there is significant turbulence in the labor 
market. It is incumbent on this Congress to examine and act on policies 
that make it possible for Americans to maintain work responsibilities 
while ensuring the well-being of their loved ones.
    I am looking forward to learning from each of our witnesses today.
                               __________
          Prepared statement of Hon. Mike Lee, Ranking Member,
                        Joint Economic Committee
    Throughout the history of this great country, Americans have worked 
to build businesses, employ workers, and support families. Through 
work, we have developed new ideas that bettered our own lives and the 
lives of our neighbors, our communities, and our country.
    When work is no longer part of our lives, we lose something 
fundamental to our ability to contribute and to thrive. Work is more 
than just a source of income, work connects us with each other and 
connects us with a purpose greater than ourselves.
    But today, work is in crisis in America. Millions of Americans have 
fallen out of the workforce since the onset of the COVID pandemic, 
workers are quitting their jobs at unprecedented rates, and labor 
unions are striking as demand for labor continues to grow.
    September's job report shows the smallest gain in payrolls this 
year, and nearly five million Americans are still on the sidelines. 
Across the country, there are more jobs than there are willing workers.
    The current employment situation should concern us all. But 
declines in labor force attachment actually precede the pandemic.
    In a new report this week, Joint Economic Committee Republicans 
evaluate the years-long question of why so many prime-age, able-bodied 
Americans have fallen out of the workforce. For men, connections to 
work have been declining for decades and hit a record low last year 
with the onset of the pandemic recession. For women, connections to 
work started receding in the last two decades.
    Our report finds that government programs and policies are making 
work less attractive, and that many Americans are voluntarily 
disconnected from work.
    That is a problem for our economy and our social fabric. 
Fortunately, there is a lot we can do to reconnect people to work. To 
begin with, we must address existing policy.
    Over the past 18 months, Congress increased safety net benefits and 
left those new and expanded programs in place for too long. Congress 
authorized unemployment checks that were sometimes twice as large as 
Americans' paychecks, and provided rent subsidies, stimulus checks, 
loan forbearance, new health care coverage, and expanded food stamps. 
Importantly, most of these benefits did not require recipients to look 
for work, even after vaccines were widely available to protect workers 
and businesses began reopening and hiring workers again.
    Current legislative proposals would make many of those anti-work 
incentives permanent, which is the wrong choice. Instead, Congress 
urgently needs to implement policies that draw disconnected Americans 
off the sidelines and into the workforce.
    Congress must remove disincentives to work by strengthening work 
requirements in safety net programs for able-bodied workers. We should 
also eliminate existing barriers to opportunity, like occupational 
licensing and labor regulations that prevent many Americans from 
entering new professions or working flexibly on their own terms.
    Finally, the Federal vaccine mandate is an obstacle to connecting 
people to work, and there is no legal or constitutional authority for 
it. The threatened employer mandate has not even been issued yet, and 
Utahns tell me that it is already jeopardizing their livelihoods and 
that unvaccinated workers are preemptively being put on unpaid leave 
which leaves them without a source of income yet ineligible for 
unemployment benefits.
    Under the mandate, some Americans would be forced to make a 
personal health decision against their will or face losing their job. 
This ultimatum to workers is unacceptable and immoral.
    Note that opposing the mandate is not the same as opposing the 
vaccine, and I do believe that the vaccine helps increase safety and 
security as we return to our places of work.
    But today, we need workers' contributions more than ever, and we 
cannot pretend to know what is good for every worker or business. We 
must put trust back in individuals, business owners, and local 
decisionmakers. We must stop making policy decisions that discourage a 
return to work.
    Reconnecting Americans to work is one of the most important policy 
goals of our time. I look forward to today's conversation on this 
essential topic.
    Thank you.
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
     Articles for the record submitted by Representative Schweikert
    1. The Anti-Poverty, Targeting, and Labor Supply Effects of the 
Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion
    https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/BFI--WP--2021-
115-1.pdf.

    2. Which States Are Driving U.S. Employment Growth?
    https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/fourth-
quarter-2021/which-states-are-driving-us-employment-growth#authorbox.
                               __________
                               
              Prepared statement of Senator Amy Klobuchar
    I'd like to give a warm welcome to a fellow Minnesotan, Mr. Dan 
Swenson-Klatt. Dan runs a fantastic cafe in Southwest Minneapolis that 
is a ``can't miss'' destination if you are in the area.
    As you will hear in his testimony, Dan's Butter Bakery Cafe is a 
community-oriented, family run cafe that is finding innovative ways to 
support their employees with fair wages and paid family leave.
    What you may not hear today, is the incredible work that Dan does 
in the Minneapolis community. Since their founding over 15 years ago, 
the team at Butter Bakery Cafe has served as mentors to youth who have 
been homeless or are at risk of being homeless. Their unique service-
oriented business model is built around partnerships with area schools, 
artists, musicians, churches, and neighborhood organizations to promote 
community engagement--all while serving some of the best breakfast food 
in the city.
    Thank you Dan for being here testifying today, your work is 
inspiring, and the city of Minneapolis is a better place because of 
your efforts.
  
                                  [all]