So……Here’s something funny that happened at work. We had to furlow some people at work for 1/day per week back in end of March, or reduce their hours by 8hours/week, just because some of our customers postponed their purchasing decision for about 3 months, and because our senior execs wanted to be careful about a prolonged economic downturn.
Originally a bunch of people that were furlowed for one day/week were all upset…But after folks started putting their heads together, all the sudden they were happy to be furlowed that 1 day/week.
Why? Simple… People were paid more by current UI benefits than they made if they worked that 5th day, even engineers and product managers. Let me explain.
Right now for CA employees, there are two unemployment benefits
1. California Benefit: Up to $450/week for reduced hours. This portion is capped, based on how much your income was reduced by
2. Federal Benefit: $600/week for reduced hours. This is a lump sum payment, and it doesn’t matter if your earnings were reduced by $10000/week , $1000/wk, or $10/week. You get $600/week for any reduced earnings.
So in CA, a person is eligible for $1050/week, $600 is guaranteed, $450 is capped by your reduction in weekly income.
Fast forward to engineers/product managers/etc that were furlowed for 1 day…. Engineers/product managers/etc don’t typically make $1050 per day. But they typically make more than $450/day. So they get the entire state benefit (that would have been salaried capped)…And they also get the $600 lump sum federal benefit.
So basically, for those folks that were furlowed for 1 day, they were paid $1050 by both federal/state UI benefits, more than they earned if they worked that day as an engineer or product manager. Lol.
The problem is, now that we got a lot of customers that suddenly want our product in June/July, all those furlowed people don’t want to get unfurlowed. They’d rather keep working with a 4/day work week until the 39 week UI benefits ends….I’m now hearing: “pick me, pick me. I want to get furlowed 1 day per week” ….If we need to do more 1-day furlows, I’m definitely volunteering…..I’ll take a 4 day work week while getting paid like a 5 day work week, any day.
So for some, not only did they not have an income reduction due to Coronavirus, they actually had an earnings increase due to Coronavirus.. Viva La United States of France… Lol.
