Why were millionaires getting unemployment benefits?
by Sen. Joni Ernst · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Over the past decade, tens of thousands of tax filers with incomes of $1 million or more were collectively paid $812 million in jobless benefits from the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund.
In 2024 alone, 10,100 million-dollar earners received nearly $97.4 million in unemployment compensation. That amounts to each being paid $9,650, roughly the cost of a new Rolex watch.
Coincidentally, it is also the amount spent on healthcare by a typical Iowan over the course of a year.
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The number of millionaires on the unemployment rolls and the amounts paid to them have also been steadily increasing in recent years. In 2014, not a single millionaire was receiving jobless benefits.
The careers of these well-off individuals, being rewarded for not working, have long been a mystery — until now.
New data divulged by the IRS reveals the top occupations among unemployed millionaires. They include engineers, software engineers, lawyers, executive managers, salespeople, physicians, consultants, production managers and positions in the financial sector.
The blue states of California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Washington are home to the largest number of those earning $1 million a year while being on the unemployment rolls.
Although states are largely responsible for administering unemployment programs, a 1964 U.S. Department of Labor ruling prohibited states from using means testing to limit eligibility. As a result, states have been required to provide financial assistance to anyone who loses a job — even if they continue earning $1 million a year or more.
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From the fields in Iowa to the battlefields in Iraq, I have worked my entire life. Unlike most of my colleagues in the Senate, I am not a millionaire. I know what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck.
That is why, during my time in the Senate, I have led the fight against unfair taxes and red tape so that every American can succeed and become prosperous through hard work and determination.
Because unemployment programs are funded primarily by taxing employers, this federal mandate is effectively a reverse Robin Hood tax that takes from struggling small businesses to give to the idle rich and self-sufficient.
I cannot think of a more outrageous example of government waste that demonstrates how out of touch Washington is than paying millionaires not to work.
Yet when I offered an amendment, the Ending Unemployment Payments to Jobless Millionaires Act, to end the eligibility for unemployment benefits for those making $1 million a year, a Democratic senator spoke against my proposal, claiming it would “undermine” the program.
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That is the mindset of the big spenders in Congress who put our nation more than $40 trillion in debt.
My amendment ultimately passed and is now law. As a result, tax dollars sent to Washington may no longer be spent on unemployment benefits for anyone making $1 million or more annually. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that this could save as much as $100 million over the next decade.
That may not sound like a lot of money in Washington, but it certainly is a lot to the taxpayers getting stuck with the bills.
Ironically, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to increase taxes on the city’s millionaires would presumably apply to many to whom the state would, in the absence of my law, have been giving jobless benefits.
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This is a prime example of the ridiculousness of socialism’s wealth redistribution: taking money out of the pockets of those creating jobs to put it into the wallets of millionaires who are not working.
I found an easier and more equitable solution: End these freebies for freeloading fat cats.
My message to the affluent finance bros being cut off from Uncle Sam’s unemployment trust fund is simple. If you are fortunate enough to make $1 million or more per year without having to work, then you should be counting your blessings — not collecting jobless benefits.
• Joni Ernst is a U.S. senator from Iowa, where she was born and raised on her family’s farm. Ernst served in the military for more than 23 years and is the first female combat veteran elected to the Senate. She chairs the Small Business Committee and DOGE Caucus and serves on the Agriculture and Homeland Security committees.
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