Do generous unemployment benefits prolong the length of unemployment?

Well, the thing is there are families that live on minimum wage here in California, and like I said $475 a week is a lot more than minimum wage.  It is definitely possible to live on that amount of money, especially if you have two people in the household who both get that much unemployment. In that situation the household would be making over $4000 a month, and that is above the national average household income  and above the household income of some working families I know.     Also, as a tangent,  isn't it a bit unfair that the poorer people who get paid minimum wage are paying for a group of people to be paid more than them for not working? 

Welfare always seems a bit unfair to the people who are paying taxes and working at the same time. And I wouldn't suggest that there AREN'T people who would happily continue to accept unemployment for as long as they can, rather than to look for work.

But I guess I'd argue that I'd rather risk having some people take advantage of the system than see a vast increase in the number of homeless families. Lesser of two evils, really, as with nearly all issues of a failing economy.

States can vary it some, but the basic model from the federal government is that there's a baseline period of unemployment benefits that applies most of the time, and then a longer period when the unemployment rate is high.  So, for example (they've been changing the details and I haven't kept up, so these are example numbers), normally it's 6 months, but when unemployment goes over 6% it goes up to 1 year.

I think that makes a lot of sense.  When economic conditions are normal, you keep the benefit short enough that it's not so easy to take advantage of, but then when times are tough, you make them more generous.

I don't think there's widespread abuse of unemployment benefits to take time off, simply because most people live right at the edges of what they can afford.  Most people can't get by on just what unemployment provides, so they need to find another job as quickly as possible.

That said, there are some people who arrange their life to minimize the amount of work they have to do and to take maximum benefit of things like unemployment.  I wrote about one of them here:

http://www.wisebread.com/find-work-worth-doing

I have a PhD in a scientific discipline. The US taxpayers invested more than $120,000 to train me in that field, via scientific training grants. For me to go to work as a dishwasher because I cannot immmediately find work in my field would not be an efficient use of government funds. It makes much more sense for me to collect unemployment (much less than my salary, which is also from government funds, by the way) for a few months, until I can find a job in my field.

J, a month is on average 4.33 weeks.

OK, fair enough. I guess I've been checking my Hebrew calendar too much lately ;-)

(love those lunar calendars...)

My question is a bit off tangent but I'm curious to see why unemployment benefits are considered taxable income, seems a bit unnecessary.

$2000/month is the maximum benefit. If you lose your health/dental benefits when you lose your job, then COBRA kicks in (if your company doesn't go under). Since you have to pay these costs out of pocket, I know a few years ago for me, they were running about $1150/month to cover me and my family for health and dental. So its probably safe to say they're over $1200/month by now.

So your net after paying for health/dental insurance is about $800 which needs to pay for housing, car, food, utilities, etc. Hence the importance of having an emergency fund of about 6 months expenses on hand to help you weather thru this.

There are restrictions such as going back to school that may cause you to lose your benefit.

In CA, much of the process can be done via mail and over the web. The one time I was required to show up at an unemployment office for a session on how to use their resources, I was struck by the differences between the people there. A segment of us were from high tech jobs and companies but most of the people were working at "blue collar" positions.

So while I spent 6 months looking and interviewing before I was hired for the next job, I think the benefits are at the appropriate level. I had sufficient funds to allow my job search to extend that period. And I think in most cases, the benefits aren't enough to live on. They do make it easier to get by.

With CA unemployment heading to 10+%, its going to be difficult to find a new job at the appropriate level. I'm glad they extended the benefits, it seems the right thing to do. Even so, I think quite a few unemployed individuals will be in danger of losing their homes and savings in today's economic downturn.

In these terrifying times, every unemployed person I know is desperate to find a decent job--not the "perfect job"--just something that will provide enough to live on. The only people I can see surviving on unemployment are kids living with their parents.

My point is that if unemployment benefits are too generous, then it makes people less motivated to take suckier jobs than if it were less generous. Also, the longer the benefits last the longer people will wait for the better job.    For example, you are getting $250 a week, and that's less than $7 an hour, so if you find a job that pays $8 an hour you would be ahead of unemployment.  (Actually unemployment might still be better due to the $2400 tax free for the year.  If you work you'd be taxed a little.) However, if your benefit increased to $475 a week, then you need a job that pays at least $12 an hour to beat unemployment, and if you are already getting $12 an hour on unemployment, then why bother taking the $12 an hour job?  Usually jobs that pay more are harder to find, and thus there is less incentive to take a crappier job when you have more unemployment benefits.  However, if you knew that your benefits were running out tomorrow, then you might be more inclined to take the crappier job, but the longer the benefits last, the more you would try to find a better paying one.  I don't think it's naive to say this, and it is not necessary a bad thing. 

My son is a laid off union electrician. His benefits will run out withing 3 months. Now that is incentive to get back to work! Either way, the extended benefits is a good thing. He really wants to work, and having just "come out of his time" as a Journeyman, he wants to stay in the trade it took 5 years to apprentice in. Maybe we need to stop over-analyzing everything.

You don't understand the situation. Unemployment is higher here than any other state. Do you honestly think the majority of us sit at home calculating what we get hourly with our unemployment checks? Do you honestly think we sit there thinking "hell, I'm living high on the hog. i don't need to work"? I wish it were so easy to grab a minimum wage job right now. It's easy for an employed person to look down on us and make snap judgements.

but this thread does sound somewhat judgemental to me. I find it disturbing to have a focus on why people don't scramble to take terrible jobs, instead of choosing to work on getting a decent position. Quite often a perspective changes when a person finds him/herself in an unexpectedly dire situation. Somewhat like a healthy person who looks down on the sick, until he/she is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.

I live in IL and my husband and I have been working on an unemployment budget(just in case). I'm a SAHM so DH is the bread winner.
We looked into benefits and it breaks down to a percentage of what you made. Just because our state's benefits top out at $538 a week doesn't mean that you get that. It just means that $538 is the most they will give out. They definitely won't pay you more than you were earning while working. If you earned minimum wage, you won't even come close to the $2000 a month on unemployment.
Unemployment definitely wouldn't be a step up for most and definitely not us. But with preplanning and some praying, I think that we could hang on to what we have if we had to go on unemployment.
Best wishes to all!

My spouse has been out of work for 14 months, I've been out of work for nearly 8 months, and we are very glad to have the unemployment extension...

If the extension were not in place, and our regular unemployment ran out, we would be spending down savings at a catastrophic rate just trying to keep our (modest fixer-upper) house.

It's not as easy as "go out and get a low-paying job to survive" because the places paying $10/hr (or whatever) don't want to hire someone who was working in IT for ten years making $50-80K, or even someone in a sales job making $40K, because they know that as soon as a decent job in our field comes along, we're going to bolt. My spouse got instantly rejected for a checkout clerk job at Whole Foods. Basically at least one of us has to get a normal job in our field, or things are going to get dire in a few months, because we can't count on finding a McJob.

Back in the late 90s I was unemployed by my own doing and had decided to switch careers. Canada's unemployment offered an option where you could go back to school with a $5000 grant to switch to new skills that were needed in an area. I had to cough up an additionally $10,000 (student loans) but one thing I knew, I didn't want to stay on unemployment. I wanted to be working.

I now live in the US and one thing I've noticed is a general exhaustion with work here. The only difference I can see is that Canada has universal health care. Which means even if I do get unemployed, I'm still covered for that. It makes me wonder if it's a matter of hope and optimism when being offered an opportunity (more education) as well as not having to worry about the bigger bills (medical) that made a difference.

No one I knew in Canada wanted to be unemployed.

That said, this market is different than back then (it was just prior to the Web bust). I think it's a reality of the fact that there are no new jobs in the market just yet and, extending the benefits is the safety net that's needed to prevent situations like the camps and such that erupted during the Great Depression. It will take time for the market to swing around again (although there are some glimmers right now going on in the Stock Market that doesn't mean much, IMO, to the average person).

Your friends who want to get unemployment as a "vacation" are probably not "average" people. I've had that attitude in the past, now and then, but at the time, I had an in-demand skill, a degree from a good college, no responsibilities, and no kids. Also, I've never had to do serious job hunting for more than a month to get some kind of relatively cushy jobs, or a tougher job with better pay, or even get a request to interview from friends. I count myself very fortunate, though I'm barely "middle class", because I haven't had to struggle much. (I also love my work.)

Almost everyone else I've known who's had that attitude was some kind of underground bohemian with a low income and few responsibilities.

All the other folks, the normal folks, do not like unemployment. They fear it, especially in this shrinking economy.

They can't just go job hunting and get a $50k a year job within a few weeks.

Even if unemployment benefits were equal to their former wages (and they never are), there's motivation to seek work, because your unemployment benefits are limited. In this down economy, they might have to use them later if they get laid off again.

Also, though government numbers say CA unemployment is just over 10%, if you factor in the people who are underemployed or stopped seeking work, the rate could be as high as 19%, according to Dr. Housing Bubble.

That's serious.

How flippin dare you - do you think I'm happy about not finding a job? Do you think my family is? Think I'm livin large on $198 plus $25 (and thanks, truly, for that).

I like to write to promote discussion, and it's always interesting to see what different people think.  The issue here is that there has been a lot of studies done that showed extended and generous unemployment benefits did increase the length people tend to go unemployed.   It may not be a popular fact, but it is not condescending either.  It just makes sense.  Of course a lot of people are working hard to find another job, but like I said multiple times, if you are getting $X a week then there is no point to take a job that pays less than that.  Unemployment is a safety net, but there needs to be some kind of limit to how long and how big it is. Some people that commented seem to  not read beyond the first paragraph, and that's pretty sad.   

and unemployment compensation is going to upset people, but it still has to be done. In every labor market, there is going to be some optimal level and length of unemployment benefits: low enough and short enough to force people to make NEEDED changes (in career, geographical location, wage rate, etc.) and high enough/long enough to prevent UNNECESSARY hardship. And even at the optimal level, it won't be perfect. Some people will take advantage, some people who are doing everything they can will suffer great hardships.

Most unemployment compensation banefits come from unemployment insurance and general taxes. Employers pay unemployment insurance; higher/longer benefits make for higher premiums, and cause employers to cut back on jobs. Higher taxes divert funds from the private job-creating sector, and therefore also reduce jobs.

Most people in this country are descended from folks whose poor employment prospects forced them to undertake major life changes to adapt and improve their lives. Some of my grandparents and great-grandparents walked most of the way across Eastern Europe and took steerage passage across the Atlantic to work in North Dakota mines. The hardships they endured in making those adjustments resulted in major improvements in their lifestyles and their children's prospects, compared to their relatives who stayed behind.

If one can't get a job in one's regular career within a year, then it seems to me that some major adaptation in one's life is in order. When lots of people can't get new jobs within a year, some major social adaptations are in order. California has a lovely climate and many great advantages, but maybe it just has too many of something else, too: maybe too many people, maybe too much government burden of taxes and regulations, maybe something else. It needs to look to its public policies and adapt them if its job market is so poor.

For years, my family was in the restaurant business. The application of minimum wage laws to waitresses (who already made over $40,000 a year with tips before the law changed) along with minimum wage hikes for dishwashers & bus-boys, high rates of unemployment insurance and worker's comp costs, and the need to practically keep a lawyer on staff to deal with all the constant legal hassles (if a cook leered at a waitress there was a sexual harassment claim; if a black person got fired there was a discrimination complaint; if a customer came in drunk but hid it well and got served a drink, there was a liquor control violation), basically made the business unprofitable and not worth keeping open. Approximately 80 full-time jobs were lost when that business closed; the new business that took over the property hires four full-time workers. Not to mention that a whole lot of customers lost their favorite eatery. Notice that every single thing that made the business unprofitable was basically a government policy in action.

And then there are the relentless political attacks, subsidized by our tax dollars, against any business that DOES manage a few successful years - Walmart, Exxon and the rest of the oil companies, the drug companies, agribusiness. If you're successful, you're evil, if you're a failure, you're subsidized. And sometimes, like AIG, you're both evil AND subsidized.

Things will probably have to get a whole lot worse before some sanity is restored to our employment and business climate. Or maybe we're really on our way to becoming Zimbabwe, and sanity is no longer an available option. For anyone who thinks things are bad now, get thee to the history books for some perspective.

I am someone living thru unemployment right now. My husband has been unemployed 4 times in the last 4 years. His first company closed and it took him 9 months to get another job. He is now 58 years old and is over qualified for the positions he is applying for or because he doesn't have a degree-not qualified. When he does get a job, it last 5 months and the company downsizes or closes and he is unemployed again. We had a very healthy emergency fund which through this unemployment we are needing to touch a bit because our COBRA is $850 a month and the max UE in Illinois is 2044 a month. This is with 2 dependents.He is strongly looking for work but he will not settle for a junk job. He wants something he can stay at until retirement. Ue is a life saver for us and with the economy the way it is, I am grateful for every week we can get.
And yes, these benefits are taxable income.

I read the article in its entirety and also many of the comments. I must say that many of the Guests that called the author elitist and condescending do not quite know how to write proper English. If these guests tried to improve themselves and learned proper grammar and spelling perhaps their chances of employment would improve. Anyway, I just think there is some truth to the author's argument that the more generous unemployment benefits are the more likely people are willing to stay on it.

When you talk about families "making it" or "getting by" on extremely low incomes-- what does that mean? Does that mean they have secure housing? Do they have health insurance? What type of neighborhood do they live in? Where do their children go to school, and do they have childcare?

I'm also curious where you got the idea that low-paying jobs are easier to find. Yes, wages are based on the laws of supply and demand, but the job market is not monolithic-- there are a lot of different supplies to meet a lot of different demands. The grocery store manager isn't scoring a coup when he hires a laid-off IT professional as a cashier.

like I said multiple times, if you are getting $X a week then there is no point to take a job that pays less than that.

Saying it multiple times doesn't make it so.

In addition to the social reasons for getting a job (any job), and the potential benefits like health insurance, the whole tax system greatly favors getting a low-paying job (over collecting unemployment). For instance, you can only qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit if you have (wait for it!) earned income! Also, you will not be paying into the social security system, so you won't be eligible for things like disability, death benefits for relatives, retirement benefits, etc. etc. These things may be theoretical to your 20-something friends, but to folks like me with kids, they are very real.

The system almost always favors those with earned income, such that in most cases it's preferable to take the job... if you can get one (big if).

are not necessarily lazy, but they have traditionally traded higher "benefits" for lower overall wages and higher chronic unemployment, as well as much reduced labor market flexibility. Between 1991 and 2005, average wages after inflation in Germany DECLINED while ours increased. For most of a generation, Germany's unemployment rate was considered excellent if it got down to levels that we would call a severe recession. Our economy has added millions of new jobs (most of which are still there in spite of this recession) for our growing population and our immigrants, while Germany has added no new jobs and its labor force has remained about the same size for years.

If you've never been an employer, there is something you probably don't understand. An employer looks at the total cost of an employee when deciding whether to hire, including wages, health coverage, employment taxes, "paid time off," training costs, severance costs, everything. If it costs an employer $60,000 to add an employee, it is irrelevant to the employer how much of that goes to wages, how much to employment taxes, etc. The total cost is all that counts. That new employee has to add much more than $60,000 to the employer's bottom line to make it worth hiring him/her, because that employee has to be supervised, supplied, officed, etc., and of course, make a profit, because otherwise there's no point in the employer existing.

From the employer's standpoint, the cleanest system would be to pay an employee that $60,000 (less employment taxes) and let the employee decide to spend it. One employee might prefer to spend some of it to "buy" vacation time or sick leave, another might prefer a particular health plan, etc., and the employer could dispense with most of its HR department. But most employees are too ignorant to figure that out, and they allow themselves to be manipulated by offers of various "benefits" in lieu of money. The government has also distorted the picture by making some of those benefits pre-tax.

If you think that an employer actually "gives" paid time off, you are deluding yourself. Employers don't "give" anything, and why should they? The employer has adjusted that employee's overall compensation package to account for the vacation time. Every employee "buys" his/her vacation and sick leave time through lower wages, whether they know it or not. And that includes Germans.

The fact that Americans don't usually get as much "paid time off" as Germans is simply because Americans by and large still prefer to take the money, rather than the time. Those Germans who would rather have the money emigrate to the U.S.

Xin, why are you assuming that your job will run from Jan 1 to Dec 31?

You may have had no EI all year, and getting a job in the last few months of the calendar year, even if you only earn a few thousand dollars, will enable you to qualify for the EITC.

Anyway, folks can't usually time their employment so precisely -- you don't know when the next job offer will come along if you turn one down. But the tax incentives for earned income vs. unemployment insurance are there.

This is getting pretty far afield from the topic of this post, but in fairness to Phil Gramm I have to take issue with Guest above. Gramm gets blamed by partisan ideologues for the mortgage crisis because he sponsored a bill back in 1999 to encourage competition between banks and other financial institutions, competition usually being a good thing for consumers. It was approved by the vast majority in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate, and signed into law by (drumroll) Bill Clinton.

And Bill Clinton promised to veto the legislation unless it included a provision prohibiting banks from getting regulatory approval for mergers unless they were lending enough to subprime borrowers. So, yes, Phil Gramm agreed to that amendment, and that certainly did help bring about the subprime crisis, but it hardly seems fair to blame him for something Bill Clinton insisted on.

And interestingly enough, even the people who try to shift the blame to Gramm don't seem to be proposing to change the law to force banks back out of other financial service sectors and vice versa.

The far bigger problem always was the combination of 1) forcing banks to lend to subprime borrowers (creating a whole lot of risky loan products which ended up being used by lots of people who were not subprime) and 2) the perception that the U.S. government was guaranteeing the resulting debt through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And who refused to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Well, it was not Phil Gramm, who left Congress in 2002. And it was not the Bush Administration, which was pressing for reform starting at least in 2003 and even earlier. If you judge by who got the biggest campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it was Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in that order.

In a way, maybe this comment does relate to the topic.

The obvious answer to the question, do generous unemployment benefits prolong the length of unemployment is, absolutely, yes. This has been proven time and again through economic analysis, and the fact that so many people commenting here get all hot and bothered about that is a big part of our national problem, which is an unwillingness to face unpleasant facts. SOME people DO delay returning to work until their benefits run out. Not all, but some. Therefore, the longer the benefits, the longer the average period of unemployment. Of course, not all people on unemployment are lazy, but those who are lazy will take advantage of the system. Duh.

Likewise, lending money to people with poorer credit WILL cause more defaults. Of course not all people with poor credit are deadbeats, but a lot of deadbeats do have bad credit, and some of them will get loans when lending standards are loosened. This is so obvious it is amazing it has to be said, but apparently a lot of people would still rather everybody just shut up about unpleasant truths.

Why would someone want to stay unemployed? Because even $12/hour jobs are not easy to find these days.

Because people lose their health benefits or have to pay out of pocket.

Because people have existing rent to pay (they aren't going to be able to downsize and get accepted to a smaller place while unemployed --you didn't even consider this).

Because people have existing mortgage payments and they aren't going to be able to sell in this market.

Because people have children to clothe, feed and house.

And the best reason for generous unemployment benefits (and California's is a pittance compared to most wealthy nations): The nations with highest standard of living for the greatest proportion of their people have: generous social programs, strong safety nets for the unemployed, universal health care regardless of income, strong unions or protections for labor and so forth.

It just so happens it's better for the economy and people living in the country if people aren't scared out of their wits they will become homeless and hungry. It just so happens it's better for a country if their children don't do without health care because their parents can't afford it.

So, you can cheap out and thereby motivate people, but the proof in the pudding is that the nations that do the opposite seem to have the wealthiest citizens across the board as well as the shortest workweeks, best health care (and most affordable), etc. etc.

I would also recommend that you develop some sensitivity to people that are madly looking for work for many months now and post a more thoughtful item about unemployment or don't post at all.

I don’t think the analogy of the engineer working at a fast food place out of desperation would quite be the case. My guess is, the unemployed engineer would be overqualified for the job. They would look at his resume, and decide to pass him up, because they know he would be out of there so soon.

So, for the engineer, he kind-of has to get the high-paying job, because no employer would believe that he would stay around for the lower-paying job.

Yes there are a small minority of people that don't bother trying to find a job if they have unemployment insurance. That hardly means we should abandon the system or that its broken.

What is the optimal duration and amount for unemployment? If you increase unemployment then people will take longer to find jobs. Thats not just lazyiness or people taking vacations, its a lot of people making logical choices to try to continue to find suitable work at their skill level rather than settle for underemployment or drastic life changes.

Unemployment maximums differ in every state. $475 is a high benefit and most states don't hit that level. To get the maximum benefit in general you have to have higher wages. So nobody is getting unemployment above the wages they used to get. TO settle for a job making less than unemployment is to settle for a job making much less than your previous job. Most of us don't *want* to take a large pay cut after unemployment. That is a last resort. The worse the economy is then the harder it is to find a job at any level.

Unemployment is not welfare. It is an insurance system. Workers do not directly fund unemployment. SO poor people are not paying for the unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits are paid for by employer insurance. The insurance rate is directly impacted by the businesses unemployment rates. If a business rarely lays off people their premiums will stay lower. If a company has high layoff rates then their workers compensation fees go up.

Annjo, you seem very knowledgeable about Germany’s unemployment rate. Also what is the average German salary in US dollars, and how much does the average German pay for health insurance? You may already that the European countries calculate unemployment differently than in the US. Last summer my families spent three weeks in Germany visiting family, and were impressed over the low levels of poverty.

BTW/my husband owns a HVAC company that employee 12 people so we do have a good understanding of employee compensation. The biggest problem for employers is healthcare.

Xin Lu, are you suggesting that I can get a job from Wal-Mart or CVS and negotiate vacation time?

Guest#66, if you never ask the employer then you will never know if they are flexible on vacation/pay.  In one company I worked for I asked for more pay and they said no, so I asked for more stock options and also days off, and they gave that to me. So you should always negotiate somewhat no matter who is offering the job.  If they say no, so what?  If you are afraid of losing the offer you shouldn't be, because it takes time for companies to recruit people and they expect people to negotiate. 

She's the next person I expect to see comment here, based on the general trend.

Guest 46 pointed out that the commenters who were very mad at this article could not write proper English. It seems like commenter 72 also belongs in the "can't spell" camp. AnnJo writes very well and she provided a lot of reasonable evidence to support her points, but it is impossible to convert idiots. I found her posts very educational, and I appreciate that she took the time to write her comments on this topic.

have a big advantage over more fact- and reason-based thinkers; all they have to do is label any inconvenient ideas as coming from someone they don't like (Ann Coulter, Fox News, corporate-sponsored media), and that relieves them of any need to listen and consider information on its own merits.

I'll keep an eye on my mailbox for those checks from my corporate sponsors. They seem to be running a little late!

Xin and AnnJo....Good job! Some people just can't handle a discussion, let alone a debate.
$475 a week...?!?!?!? I make a modest 6figure income working construction. Yes...construction! I myself, most likely, will be one of those who will be filing for Unemployment very soon as my current project will be completed and there is nothing on the schedule for future projects. Receiving $2k a month will make a HUGE impact to my financial stability. To maintain, my savings will decrease by over $3k per month. However, I have developed a strategy for retaining my savings (mostly) and live, by using the unemployment benefit. My only question is.... can I collect if I'm staying out of country?
BTW...I am one of those who would take the full 79 week term, if possible...while I "search" for that near pefect job.

and No...this is not an April Fool's Day posting..Lol!

Guest 77, you do have to accept the position you are offered in California.  So that means that people wouldn't even apply to the lower paying positions because they know they have to accept it.  Additionally, you cannot be attending school, but like I said in my article my friend is preparing for graduate school.  This means studying for tests and getting essays together.  The unemployment office doesn't even know that he is doing this. 

During economic recessions, when unemployment rises, you sometimes have to extend benefits. Things take time. People need time to study or retrain. Businesses need time to figure out what will rescue the business, and then start hiring.

Do we really want all the unemployed people to become homeless while they readjust? Do companies want the labor force to be homeless?

@Andrew - if everyone worked 60 hours a week, you'd have to work 80 to get ahead. How would you like that?

See, me, I have a sense of proportion. I want the work week reduced to a nice-and-lazy 30 hours a week. Then, I could continue with my 40-45 hours a week of working (not including the 10-20 I put in studying outside of work) and say I'm a real hard worker.

@Annjo - if you can make enough money on 10 hours a week, great. If others will stop working because the taxes take too much, that's fine too. This creates opportunities for other people to try and do the work you are doing.

You should enjoy your fortunate situation. Just don't assume everyone else can do what you've done.

Reducing unemployment insurance is not a solution to get people back into the workforce or fix this economy, how about we focus on the other side which is increasing the amount of jobs available?

If there were more jobs out there, fewer people would be unemployed and less money would be taken from unemployment insurance.

Perhaps we should talk more about fixing the cause instead of the effects?