The combination of federal and state government unemployment benefits available to Georgians during the pandemic is more than normal.
In some cases, those benefits are also more than those workers might be making on the job, and that’s prompting questions about whether these benefits will discourage people from coming back to work and about Georgia’s minimum wage.
Ryan Pernice owns a few restaurants north of Atlanta. Because of the pandemic, he was forced to furlough two-thirds of his staff. As they’ve slowly started reopening, he’s had to call down his list of furloughed employees to bring them back on.
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