My understand now is indeed that there are much more jobs available out there than people think, but that not working has literally become too attractive to people. And that there are whole industries that have more job openings than a applicants but for numerous reasons, this being one, they still don’t have takers for all their positions.
In addition to having it be 6 months (maybe 9 if there is a legit recession) and having to show proof that you looked for jobs there could also be a way to provide monitoring to those who are looking for work and ensure that they conduct job interviews properly and provide proof that they did their job searches properly. And show that they looked at ALL available jobs - in other words, cut off unemployment benefits to anyone who is only looking at jobs they find attractive and cannot show proof that they seriously considered all job opportunities that were handed to them. Now I know that local, state and federal gov’ts can and would find plenty of ways to screw this system up but I suspect it would still work way better than what we have now.
I know someone who’s been unemployed for over a year. At know time has the state of Md ever checked to see if she’s applied for any job at all. She just goes on line and lies. She also just had knee surgery and can’t work but is still receiving unemployment. Nobody seems to care if you’re really looking for work. It’s just become a scam.