Professor Stewart Schwab, Jonathan and Ruby Zhu Professor of Law at Cornell Law School
Dr. Algernon Austin, Senior Researcher at the Thurgood Marshall Institute and former director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE).
Alexandra Hubbard, Fraser Stryker PC LLO
Professor Catherine Wilson, UNL College of Law
Moderator: Professor Steve Willborn, UNL College of Law

This panel will begin by describing the general structure of the unemployment compensation system, especially its countercyclical features, and two of the most significant changes made in response to the pandemic: increasing unemployment benefits by a significant amount and expanding eligibility to non-employees. Then the focus will turn to Nebraska specifically; the panel will present information on the level of and eligibility for unemployment benefits in Nebraska before the pandemic, under the CARES Act, and currently. The discussion will then shift to the other side of the employment equation: employers. The panel will describe the assistance provided to employers, especially small employers, to permit them to avoid dismissing or laying off employees and the effects of the assistance on different kinds of employers and employees. Finally, the panel will discuss the persistent jobs gap for African-Americans even before the pandemic, the extent to which the pandemic exacerbated that gap, and the effects of the government’s efforts to address unemployment generally on the gap.