Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Unemployment insurance helps, not hinders, Americans looking for work

Claims that unemployment insurance benefits dissuade the jobless from looking for work are untrue, as the accompanying chart shows. Research by Carl Van Horn and the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University shows that unemployed workers who receive unemployment compensation do more to find a job than those who never receive benefits. They do more online job searching, are more likely to look at newspaper classified ads, and are more likely to send email inquiries and applications to prospective employers.

The reason unemployed Americans can’t find jobs isn’t a failure to look. As EPI economist Heidi Shierholz points out, they can’t find jobs because there are 10.6 million more unemployed workers than there are available jobs.

1 comment:

namefromthepast said...

Am I supposed to believe that a person who has no income is less motivated to find a job than a person who has even a meager income steam?

There is more to this story.