Press Release: 4/1/2025

NFIB Launches Ad Campaign Urging Reform of Broken Mass. UI System, Decrying Unfair Costs on Small Businesses After Mandated Shutdowns, Fraud, and $2.1 Billion State Error

 

March 31, 2025

NFIB rolls out digital and radio ads this week

FOR IMMEDIATE 

BOSTON, MA (March 31, 2025) – The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), Massachusetts’ leading small business advocacy organization with thousands of members across the Commonwealth, launched a radio and online [advertising campaign] today urging lawmakers and Gov. Healey to fix the state’s broken Unemployment Insurance (UI) system, which is unjustifiably saddling Main Street businesses with ever increasing taxes and fees. The campaign also includes a website – ProtectMassachusettsSmallBusiness.org – with information about this worsening crisis, news articles about the issue, and links to contact local legislators.

>>>>> CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE RADIO AD.

Massachusetts has historically ranked worst in the nation for state unemployment insurance taxes on small businesses, with the Commonwealth barely rising from the bottom to the 47th spot this year. Well before the COVID pandemic, Massachusetts was an irresponsible outlier for unemployment insurance policy, providing overly generous benefits and lax eligibility requirements. These flaws in Massachusetts’s unsustainable UI system became very clear when the pandemic struck, along with the state-imposed shutdowns and restrictions.

“Now is the time to secure the long-term security of our UI system while providing desperately needed relief for Massachusetts employers,” said NFIB Massachusetts State Director Christopher Carlozzi. “The state’s COVID shutdowns and restrictions caused the layoffs and resultant debt, which were beyond the control of Massachusetts employers, and lawmakers all but refused to utilize ample federal relief aid as intended to fill the muti-billion-dollar hole in the UI trust fund. Our unsustainable benefits and lax eligibility requirements, coupled with rampant UI fraud and overpayments during the pandemic, which were never fully examined, left businesses holding the bag to repay the federal UI debt. To add insult to injury, the COVID-era $2.1 billion error discovered last year in the program will now add even further to the sky-high taxes and assessments small businesses must pay.”

“Last October, the annual Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) report warned the UI trust fund may well be facing insolvency by 2028 without a change in trajectory. Massachusetts’ small businesses have argued since before the pandemic that state lawmakers needed to get serious about our unemployment insurance crisis,” Carlozzi continued. “Now, devastating post-shutdowns UI tax bills are being made even worse by the state’s misuse of federal funds and settlement with the government. The heavy financial burden of this looming crisis has been shifted to Main Street businesses by lawmakers through bad UI policies, unfair funding decisions, and an embarrassing state error. For the sake of small businesses and future UI beneficiaries, the system needs to be fixed now, before the trust fund becomes insolvent – and before the next recession.”

Below is a transcript of the radio ad.

Massachusetts :30 Radio Ad Script

Massachusetts made a 2.1-billion-dollar mistake. That’s, right…2.1 BILLION dollars.

Now Beacon Hill wants small businesses to pick up the tab through higher unemployment insurance taxes.

Our state is already ranked one of the worst in the nation for U-I taxes and these tax hikes will make it even harder to start, operate, or grow a small business.

Visit Protect Massachusetts Small Business dot org and urge elected officials to reform our broken U-I system and help Main Street businesses.

Paid for by the National Federation of Independent Business

To learn more about the campaign, please visit ProtectMassachusettsSmallBusiness.org.

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For 80 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven. Since our founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses, and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.