Long-Term Unemployment Highest Since WWII

How is Barack Obama making more and more people dependent on the federal government?

Here’s one way: he has been stubbornly extending long-term unemployment benefits. What this means is that those out of work are not incentivized to look for a job, which neatly dovetails with the fact that employers are showing a tendency to hire workers who have had a job more recently and eschew hiring those who are among the long-term unemployed.

The result of this double whammy is that long-term unemployment is higher now than at any time since World War II. These unemployed may well become a permanent fixture on the American scene. The average time people stay unemployed now is twice as long as the previous three recessions, doubling from 20 to 40 weeks.

Obama’s worker training programs which he espouses may be useless if those long-term unemployed are shunned by employers and can rest on largesse from the government.  Since 2008, unemployment benefits have been extended ten times; the latest raise was $30 billion. The total for the unemployment benefit raises over that period? $30 billion.