That's not a fair point. People here talk about guilds and apprenticeships occasionally and that's what residencies are. You have a high, secure lifetime salary afterwards. It's a hard job, but it's just a career stage in an otherwise lucrative (although sometimes a difficult, stressful, and dangerous) career path.
The pay for residents isn't bad compared to the rest of the country. But they do work crazy hours. $/hr they are making like $18/hour x 18 hours/day x 10 day rotation.
They wouldn't get a pay bump by going on UI. They would get more sleep.
Can you provide evidence to your claim? Not to mention that even if it were true, it would prevent or delay them from making $200k to $1m / year after residency. Hardly seems like a worthwhile trade-off.
A quick search says the average us residency salary is $61,200 as of 2019, which is above the unemployment maximum even taking into account the additional $600 a week in pandemic funding.
I think they’re going off a per hour basis. If a resident is working an 80 hour week, they aren’t getting paid much per hour.