right now. and focusing on sort of extending the problem i think is the wrong thing to focus on. if you look at president obama s economic speech, the part i like the best is his emphasis on addressing the long-term unemployment problem. he said he was going to meet with a bunch of executives at the white house soon and announce a new program. i m quite eager to see what he says there. that you get a tax credit for hiring someone who has been unemployment for a certain time. these folks are really in trouble and the good unemployment news doesn t really affect the long-term but we should do both. we should help the folks that are still in trouble. kevin is right, there s an element that s there because of the ui program. and people that stay unemployed because they can get enough from unemployment. there s a lot of academic work and research, but my estimates a percentage is due to ui benefits. kevin is right, we have to work on long term structural unemployment but i w