Money as motivation Christer Watson The news is filled with stories of managers complaining about difficulty in hiring. These stories usually highlight the idea that unemployment benefits discourage people from accepting jobs. There are several aspects of these stories I find incredibly frustrating. Most important, this story is a clear scientific hypothesis. This hypothesis needs to be tested before it is passed around as if it were true. That is, this idea could be wrong. Instead, it could be true that people collecting unemployment benefits are mostly concerned about finding their next good job. The benefits might be helpful for tiding over a hard stretch, but not something that changes their behavior.