Job boom follows cut in unemployment benefits in North Carolina

David Freddoso:

We don’t like to buy into shoddy post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc arguments around here. But even worse than post-hoc arguments are the ones based on events that haven’t actually happened. I’m thinking specifically of the lamentations in the pundit class that North Carolina’s economy would implode when unemployment benefits were cut and shortened in length last July.

I wrote on this four weeks ago in my Washington Examiner column:

In July, North Carolina became the first state to end extended unemployment benefits altogether. As John Hood notes in the Carolina Journal, the number of employed in the state jumped by 39,000 between July 1 and Nov. 30, after standing still for the entire first half of the year. The state’s unemployment rate had taken more than two years to come down by 1.5 points to where it was in June (8.8 percent). Between July 1 and Nov. 30, it declined by roughly that amount (to 7.4 percent). During that same period, about 26 percent fewer workers were dropping out of the workforce each month than had been previously.

Today’s BLS numbers on state employment in December build upon this — and they should give lawmakers pause if President Obama asks them in the State of the Union address to restore emergency extended unemployment benefits. The new data do not prove to us that unemployment benefit cuts are good for job creation, but they demonstrate that they might be good and at least can’t be that bad.

The new payroll data show that North Carolina created another 11,100 jobs in December, which is 15 percent of what the nation as a whole added last month....
...

There is more.

Apparently a lack of benefits gives some an incentive to find work.  Who knew?  The same thing happened in the late 90's when the Republicans pushed through welfare reform.  It is the Obama model of endless benefits that is prolonging this recession.