US / The problem is the duration of unemployment benefits, not the duration of unemployment writes Alex Brill

For many who have been jobless for over six months, finding employment is difficult if not impossible. According to economists Rand Gayad and William Dickens, employers become less and less likely to hire people who are unemployed for six months or more.

In short, the extravagant duration of unemployment benefits in the last five years has had the unintended effect for many recipients of perpetuating unemployment until reemployment is out of the question.

Adding insult to injury, the unprecedented expansion of unemployment benefits not only contributed to the long-term unemployment problem, but also was enormously expensive. From 2008 through 2012, federal spending on unemployment benefits totaled nearly $280 billion, and states spent an additional $313 billion during that period.

After accounting for the spending attributable to the permanent unemployment insurance program, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the expansion of benefits increased the federal debt by $210 billion.

Those dollars are gone, and the federal debt is worse as a result.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor

via Let’s stop funding unemployment benefits | Fox News.

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