If You Subsidize Unemployment Benefits, You Get...More Unemployed People

The headline today is that initial unemployment claims hit a six-year high of 455,000.  In the USA Today coverage, though, this little nuggett is buried:

The latest snapshot of layoff filings is worse than analysts expected. Economists were expecting claims to drop to around 430,000.

The new layoff figures were distorted by an outreach program to notify people that they could qualify for additional benefits under a new law.

When people went to state claims offices to apply for extended unemployment benefits, state officials discovered that some were eligible — but had not filed — for their initial unemployment benefits, a Labor Department analyst said. That accounted for some of last week's increase, he said.

So, if you fund more unemployment benefits, you get more people claiming them.  Hardly a surprise.  This report seems to indicate that about 25,000 people are now on the unemployment rolls who otherwise would be finding a job.  Further evidence that the whole concept of "umemployment insurance" is dubious at best and stupid at worst.

Comments

[Tessa Egizi]

Are you joking? Get in the real world, there are no jobs for most people, I personally at 48 have never been without a job, I have been unemployed for over 7 months now, I put in over 20-150 applications and resumes a week, I am out every day I get a job, train and am laid of with in a couple of days or weeks at best because no one is able to barely keep doors open. All the once good jobs have been outsourced the rich are laughing all the way to the bank and the illegals and green card holders are working for so cheap that the rest of us are forced to work for poverty wages or loose our jobs to Mexicans. Wake up. I did, the rich and the politicians who allowed the working class to pay for there pork and leave us living in our cars should be lined up, shoot and buried in a mass grave, including any closed minded right wing idiot who has no clue about the real world out here.
Everyone who agrees think about our constitutional right to over through a corrupt government, if we don't do it, some other country will for us mark my words, you will see.