Currently, people can draw benefits for up to 79 weeks in 24 states and from 46 weeks to 72 weeks in others.
In ordinary times, employers pay into a state insurance fund, and workers who lose jobs draw benefits for up to 26 weeks.
With job losses mounting in the wake of the terrorist attacks, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill said the Bush administration was considering plans to allow laid-off workers to draw benefits for longer than the current 26-week limit.
In each of the main categories, incapacity benefit and single parents, the massive increase in the number of jobs has resulted in those who have been drawing benefit for the shortest period of time moving to employment.
Under the proposed law, EU citizens would be forbidden from drawing benefits for their first five years in Germany.
A single injury can easily cost $10,000, and sometimes several hundred thousand dollars when a badly maimed worker draws benefits for life.
It is worth noting that last month Germany moved to impose strict limits on EU citizens' access to the country's social welfare system, with the government approving a draft bill barring EU migrants from drawing benefits for their first five years in Germany.
New jobless claims were up to 588,000 last week, while the number of workers drawing benefits for more than a week crept toward 4.8 million.
In Britain, which has much lower unemployment than most of Europe, the debate has turned on largely emotional fears that tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans will flock to Britain to draw benefits without working for them.
Benefit recipients draw benefits longer (many for the maximum potential duration – such is the experience even in the well-thought of program introduced by China, see Vodopivec and Tong2008) and many simultaneously work in informal jobs (see the evidence for Brazil above).
