The Progressive Pulse: “This morning, the Finance Committee of the North Carolina House approved House Bill 107, which, among its largely technical provisions, would make two significant changes to state unemployment insurance policy:
- it would reinstate work search requirements for individuals making non-COVID-19-related unemployment insurance claims, and
- it would hold the base tax rate for employers at just 1.9%, rather than following the planned increase that currently contained in state law.
The decision to hold employer tax rates at the current low rate is a mistake.
Back in 2013, when lawmakers and Gov. McCrory approved House Bill 4 — the bill that imposed significant cuts to worker benefits — they also included a trigger that would have raised the State Unemployment Tax Act (SUTA) base tax rate in order to ensure that employer contributions into the state Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund are sufficient to keep the system solvent — a major priority of legislative leaders.
At present, North Carolina’s tax rate is the fourth lowest in the country.
Meanwhile, as national experts, state researchers, and media outlets have repeatedly noted, North Carolina has the least effective unemployment insurance system in the country because it serves too few jobless workers, with too little wage replacement for too short a time.”