Despite every mouth-breathing moron's insistence across the political spectrum, eligibility for or receipt of benefits per se has ZERO to do with the unemployment rate, which is derived entirely from a household survey that does not even ask about benefits, and is administered by a different department.
Then there's this nugget of shite: "Others may give up looking for work and drop out of the labor force, eliminating them from the ranks of the jobless."
First the factual problems. People have to stop looking, entirely, for a month to even drop out of U3. To drop out of the labor force in toto they have to not have looked for a job once in an entire year, so willingness to look based on upcoming benefit changes is unlikely to affect UE until 2013. Then there is the logical problem which is even worse. Why would not being paid benefits make you LESS likely to look for work? Does anybody see the problem with the sentence "well I looked diligently for a job every day when they paid me $300 a week in UI but now I get no money at all I'm going to stop trying to get a paid job"?
The only part of this that makes any sense at all is: "Some recipients who lose their benefits may decide to accept jobs they view as less than ideal."
It's horrible that it comes down to this but yes no doubt plenty of $50K earners will be forced to take $25k jobs if they can get them now the benefits are gone. Sure even the most generous UI benefits aren't much more than $30k but most people will choose that with perfect freedom to network and interview and look for openings over working 40 hrs for less money in a CV-busting job far beneath their career level. However, when those benefits run out, that $25k option will seem better than 0.
So the only way this headline is even vaguely true is in how much it will increase underemployment.
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