15% Favor Extending Unemployment Benefits Indefinitely
Support for extending unemployment benefits is up slightly, but more than twice as many Americans still think the federal government should do nothing at all to help the long-term unemployed.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 15% of American Adults believe the federal government should extend unemployment benefits indefinitely for those who can’t find work after an extended period of time. That's up from 10% in November and the highest level of support since June 2011. Essentially unchanged from past surveys are the 11% who think the government should just hire the long-term unemployed. Twenty-nine percent (29%) prefer the short-term solution of paying for their retraining, consistent with surveying for the past couple years.
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The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on January 6-7, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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