The Indicator from Planet Money
The Indicator from Planet Money

The fired labor economist who couldn't get unemployment

June 8, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In August 2025, Erica Groshen, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was fired by President Trump. So she did what any newly unemployed person would do: she applied for unemployment benefits. But when she tried to verify her identity through Maryland’s mobile app—taking a picture of her license and a selfie—the app kept failing. “It would just sort of spin and then die and say failure to like register your picture,” she recalls. She tried changing the lighting, deleting and reinstalling the app, and calling the state help line, which told her to keep trying. “It was so frustrating,” she says, “because I was like, listen, Google me. Let's get on a Zoom. You can look at my face. I am literally on the front page of the New York Times.” She was arguably the most famous unemployed person in America at the time, and she still couldn’t get the system to work.

The system’s original design flaw

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:11) **The Fired Economist's Unemployment Nightmare** - Erica Mackintar, fired by President Trump as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, tries to apply for unemployment benefits but gets stuck on an identity-verification app.
  • 2 (01:46) **The Episode's Mission** - Hosts Adrian Ma and Whalen Wong introduce the show's goal: diagnose what's wrong with the U.S. unemployment insurance system and explore how to fix it.
  • 3 (03:02) **The System's Core Problem: Underfunded and Outdated** - Economist Catherine Ann Edwards explains the fundamental weaknesses of the American unemployment insurance system.
  • 4 (04:23) **The Patchwork of State Programs** - Each state runs its own program, leading to massive variation in benefits, qualification rules, and payout amounts.
  • 5 (05:05) **Application Process Woes** - Erica returns to describe her two-week struggle with Maryland's mobile app, which was presented as the only option.
  • 6 (06:08) **Benefits Are Too Low** - Erica flags that benefit caps haven't kept pace with inflation, failing to match real worker expenses.
  • 7 (07:05) **A Federal Fix: Three Tiers of Benefits** - Catherine Ann Edwards proposes a more federal structure with three tiers based on unemployment duration.

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Guests on this episode

Catherine Ann Edwards

Show Notes

A top labor economist encounters the endlessly frustrating labyrinth of filing for unemployment after getting fired by President Trump. Why are unemployment benefits so hard to get, and can we do anything to fix the system? 

Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.

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