Fewer Jobless Benefits, More Jobs

North Carolina offers a market test of incentives to work—or not.

Click here to read the WSJ editorial. (2-7-14) Excerpts:

"This should surprise no one. Alan Krueger, President Obama's former chief economist, coauthored a 2008 study on the amount of time that unemployed people spent looking for work and found that "job search is inversely related to the generosity of unemployment benefits." 

Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research reported last year that unemployment was worse in places with generous benefits, and not just because workers had less incentive to get on a payroll. The bigger problem is that such benefits discourage businesses from hiring."