Roughly half of all U.S. workers stand to earn more in unemployment benefits than they did at their jobs before the coronavirus pandemic shut down swaths of the U.S. economy, a result of government relief that employers say is complicating plans to reopen businesses. The package of coronavirus stimulus laws Congress passed and President Trump signed in March included a $600 boost to weekly unemployment benefits through July 31. As that support is added to state benefits over the coming weeks, the average weekly payment to a laid-off worker should rise to about $978 from the nearly $378 the Labor Department said was paid on average late last year. Qualified workers will receive the government payout every week through July, and in most cases, the combined $978 weekly payout amounts to better pay than what many workers received before the crisis hit. Labor Department statistics show half of full-time workers earned $957 or less each week in the first quarter of 2020. The stimulus measure means that in coming months many low-wage workers will avoid both significant harm to their finances and the potential health risks—and further virus spread—of returning to crowded workplaces. That money in consumers’ pockets in turn puts the U.S. economy on firmer footing to rebound once authorities allow businesses to reopen. Figures on prior earnings of the more than 26 million Americans who sought unemployment benefits from March 15 through April 18 aren’t yet available, but the initial wave of job losses were concentrated among restaurant, hospitality and retail workers, whose median hourly pay is less than the minimum now paid under enhanced unemployment benefits. The $600 bonus payment was intended to make sure the average worker had full wage replacement in the months following mass layoffs caused by the pandemic. Last year, states’ unemployment benefits replaced about 45% of laid-off workers’ wages, according to the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage workers. Congress opted for a flat amount because decades-old technology underpinning state unemployment systems didn’t allow for payments to be calibrated to each worker’s lost wages. “If we waited for the systems to be set for 100% wage replacement, the payments wouldn’t go out until June,” said Michele Evermore, a NELP senior policy analyst. She added that under the existing system, many laid-off workers waited weeks to have their unemployment claims processed and some still are waiting for the enhanced payments. The $600 payment aligns with working full time at $15 an hour—the minimum-wage level many Democrats in Congress support. The federal minimum wage—followed by 21 states—is $7.25 an hour and has been unchanged for a decade. Restaurant and front-end retail workers in those states, including Texas and Georgia, are likely to receive more in benefits than from their jobs.