Calculation of the Cost of Unemployment Benefits (With Particular Reference to Ohio and Pennsylvania)

The hardships of the current depression have inevitably revived in this country proposals to apply the principles of insurance or reserves to one of depression's most serious hazards: that of unemployment. In Wisconsin an unemployment reserve law, not yet operative, has been-passed. Legislative and other commissions have approved the principle of unemployment indemnity in at least seven other states; and commissioners representing the Governors of the six largest Eastern industrial states have unanimously urged on their chiefs the desirability of uniform legislation on the reserve plan. The following paper, on the calculation of the cost of unemployment benefits, discusses one aspect of the question that--sooner or later--must be decided in any thorough-going investigation. It is an aspect that, particularly in the propagandist stage of argument and discussion, is of small general interest.