Chicago Mayor Lightfoot to Dole Out $500/Month Cash Assistance

All federal pandemic unemployment benefits ended in September but certain low-income Chicagoans may soon be able to collect $500 monthly for a year.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot called for the $30 million payment plan to create a “first-of-its-kind pilot in Chicago of a monthly cash assistance program for hard-hit, low-income households in need of additional economic stability,” the Chicago Tribune reported.

The $500 per month payments would go to 5,000 households for 12 months, according to the city’s Budget Department, and will “be focused on very low-income residents who have been economically hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the Tribune said.

This as the country is going through a nationwide labor shortage — restaurants, hotels, and other in-person service industry employers continue to be unable to find enough willing workers to fill their open positions.

The country added 962,000 jobs in June and another 1.1 million in July, Business Insider reported.

And the ratio of workers-to-openings fell to 0.8 in July, as there were more job listings than available workers to fill them, the news outlet said.

The job openings may indicate that workers are looking for jobs with better pay, benefits and other perks or moving to different areas of work.

But incentives like this Chicago one only further delay the country’s economy getting back to full strength by lowering the incentive to work — all on the taxpayers’ dime.

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