I think most serious economists would agree that unemployment benefits of any sort mitigate against seeking jobs. I don't mean this in an ideological "if you d

I think most serious economists would agree that unemployment benefits of any sort mitigate against seeking jobs. I don't mean this in an ideological "if you don't agree you're not serious" sense, I actually think I've seen a very similar question in a paper titled something like Where is there Consensus among American Economists? A survey of 40 Propositions - there are several dangerously-similarly-titled papers though and I don't have the tools or motivation to look them up right now. (JSTOR etc). It's pretty well-predicted by theory and I believe that there exist studies that back it up a little. Of course the real question, as most in economics, isn't an all-or-nothing proposition, but a marginal one: How much unemployment benefit maximizes the utility experienced by society? Would spending more of our national resources on these benefits, or spending less, help or hinder our current situation?