“I Could Be Unemployed the Rest of the Year”: Unprecedented Times and the Challenges of “Making More”

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented in many ways, but perhaps no more so than in the sudden expansion of—and increase in—unemployment assistance benefits. We ask how precarious workers, many of whom were “hustling” for money or engaged in creative fields, feel about making more on unemployment. How are they using the funds? We draw on remote interviews and online surveys with 199 gig and precarious workers in New York City during the first wave of the pandemic. We find that workers are ambivalent about unemployment assistance and concerned that a financial influx today portends a shortage tomorrow. This “specter of the unknown” affected workers’ use of their benefits. As a result, even though the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act was intended to mitigate the social and economic impact of the pandemic, these programs—despite being helpful—may have also contributed to precarious workers becoming even more certain of their insecurity.