I did read that. The number of people collecting unemployment dropped 60% and the number of people with jobs went down 1.4%.
Doesn't that indicate a lot of people gave up their unemployment benefits without finding work? I don't understand the correlations being derived from the information. Help me out here.
You are reading that wrong, or I should say interpretation it wrong.
"in fact, the share of adults with a job fell by 1.4 percentage points over the same period, according to Dube. (Employment rose by 0.2 percentage points in states that didn’t end the pandemic benefits.) ".
Read that again.
It didn't say unemployment fell, it said the # of adults with jobs fell, meaning that 1.4% LESS adults are working. (If people going off unemployment where taking jobs, the number of adults working would be increasing, not falling). Notice they said adults, I am guessing, it most likely meaning that jobs where being filled by under 18 teenagers taking summer jobs, which means unemployment may have went down, but the jobs are being filled by temporary workers who are not supporting families and will be going back to school at the end of the summer, or students working after school and weekends. They then go to say that EMPLOYMENT (not unemployment) rose by 0.2 percent in states that didn't end the pandemic benefits. Now, to be fair, they are using two different metrics, one is adults working, one is employment in that sentence, so it really isn't an apples to apples comparison between the two. Either way, the take away here, is cutting the benefits really had little effect on Unemployment for the working adults.