THE Grinch came late last year. Thanks to congress, extended unemployment benefits expired the weekend after Christmas, leaving 1.3m Americans resolving in the new year to find work or get by with less. Of course, work is not easy to come by these days, especially for the long-term unemployed. Matthew Yglesias of Slate writes:

The result is a morally scandalous situation that will start playing out in the new year. People who've been out of work for a long time obviously really need some money to get by, and they're going to lose their money. And they're not going to make up for it by getting jobs.

Mr Yglesias cites Evan Soltas' analysis of the labour-market situation in North Carolina, a state that put an end to its programme of extended unemployment benefits earlier this year. Mr Soltas, writing for Bloomberg, observes that North Carolina has seen not a surge in employment, but an unprecedented contraction in the size of its workforce.

This is not altogether surprising given the depressing fact, which Mr Yglesias notes, that employers are strongly biased against job applicants who have been out of work over half a year. This raises a tough question about what to do about would-be workers who have been unemployed too long to remain attractive to employers. It also raises a question about whether continually extended unemployment insurance is the best way to help those who find themselves in such a rotten situation. As Mr Yglesias says, the point of unemployment insurance is to "tide people over until they can find a job," making it "an inappropriate way to support" those who are unlikely to find jobs because their résumés have grown stale.

In any case, Mr Yglesias overstates his case. Many of those who have just lost their unemployment benefits will get jobs. It's not actually impossible. It's also important to acknowledge that the composition of the workforce and labour-market conditions vary somewhat from state to state, and the example of North Carolina may not tell us everything we might wish to know about the effect of ending extended unemployment insurance benefits.

Mr Soltas argues that unemployment insurance was at least keeping North Carolinians looking for work, since it's required to remain eligible for benefits, instead of just giving up all hope and dropping out altogether. Mr Soltas is quite correct that one must actively search for work in order to remain eligible for benefits, but it is easy to identify and apply for suitable open positions in a manner that more or less ensures that one is not going to get a call, if one would prefer collecting benefits over working. I suspect most recipients of unemployment benefits struggle with such temptations, and I can't imagine everyone is immune to them. I know it certainly tested my virtue when I was on unemployment in the thick of the Great Recession. It became clear to me, as I'm sure it has become clear to millions of others, that "looking for a job" is one thing and really looking for a job is rather another. Indeed, collecting unemployment insurance amounts to a job that requires that one "look for a job" and not find one. That's not the way it's supposed to work, but we humans are not a far-seeing lot. As those slick behavioural economists are quick to tell us, we can be nudged this way and that, to our benefit and peril, with very small changes in the parameters of choice. Reallylooking for a job often means facing the terror of a move to some far, alien and uncongenial place when one would much rather remain nestled among family and friends in a familiar cosy burg where there are no jobs. This is an unpleasant business, and one wants to put it off. Under such circumstances, extending unemployment benefits amounts to a nudge in the direction of continuing to "look" when we really ought to belooking. Andthen, when we do finally square up to the vexing anxieties of dislocation or wrenching professional redefinition, we find ourselves frozen out of the job market by employers who assume, justly or unjustly, that we wouldn't have been unemployed so long if we were worth employing. Whoops!

Of course, the tough love of a strict, short period of unemployment insurance eligibility doesn't much help—doesn't amount to love—when there simply aren't jobs to be found, and under these circumstances one or two emergency extensions of eligibility may make sense. But after a certain point what people really need is to get back into work before it's too late, and extending unemployment benefits again and again is a really terrible way to do this. Policy ought to focus on ensuring that it doesn't become too late, rather than subtly but surely encouraging people to become unemployable, which is what we've done, like it or not.

So what to do? We could have done worse than a government make-work scheme or two. It seems obviously better to pay workers to freshen their résumés doing something or other, useful or not, than it is to pay them to "look for jobs" as their résumés grow mould. More vigorous, one-to-one assistance in the job search could help. How about offering folks lump sums to relocate from bad to good labour markets? Sooner or later, we're going to have another bad recession. It's worth thinking about beforehand.

At this juncture, however, the pressing question is what to do about those who have been unceremoniously dropped from the unemployment insurance rolls. As Mr Yglesias says, these people "really need some money to get by", and it would be an excellent idea to give them some in a way not conditional on their continuing to remain unemployed. It would be quite nice if Congress hadn't already slashed food stamps, but Congress isn't nice. At the very least, most of these struggling former workers will in the new year qualify for Obamacare's premium subsidies, which should be a breeze to acquire—once Healthcare.gov is the frictionless, world-class e-commerce site Americans were promised.

In the meantime, consider a belated resolution to give generously and frequently to your local food bank this year.

(Photo credit: AFP)