Professor Robert Barro: Unemployment rate would be 6.8%, not 9.5%, if jobless benefits were not extended to 99 weeks

If I had been without a job the last year, I’d be only too happy to have unemployment benefits that go 99 weeks. It’s hard to favor a limit, especially when that limit hurts you personally and immediately.

But according to Harvard economics Professor Robert Barro, the extension of unemployment benefits from the standard 26 weeks to 99 weeks has had the effect of adding about 2.5 percent (or more) to the unemployment rate.  That’s at least 3.85 million people.

Barro also has been critical of the Democrats’ $800 billion “stimulus” program, which he accurately predicted would stimulate no additional jobs because it included no incentives to increase work effort, investment or productivity.

Frank Warner

* * *

See also: Germans know that debt can kill an economy.