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Depending upon the math, and he says they stayed unemployed longer, because they received benefits. the average time that somebody stays unemployed is around six months right now. let me bring professor shimer in. he is joining us from chicago. thank you, professor shimer, for joining us. >> thank you very much. >> you are the first person i have seen who is actually putting some numbers to this. tell me how you came about this estimate that 1.5 to 2.3 million people may not be working or may not have gone to work. >> sure. i want to correct within thing. i don't think that i ever said that pe...

Subsidizing unemployment. >> interesting conversation. >> also, we would have less of a disinventive effect, and the cost would be borne i would say more appropriately. >> interesting and innovative idea and tough to do in the middle of an economic recovery right now that we are stuck with. >> i understand that. >> but i do appreciate the point that you made that economics can explain the effects of it, but you are not necessarily saying it is the right thing to do, but just giving us the facts which is what we appreciate and why we wanted to bring you on. robert shimer is a professor of econo...

Past that, professor shimer, what is the alternative to extending benefits when there are 5.5 applicants for every job, what do you do instead? >> well, just in terms of the apley can't a applican applicants, and even last year 4.1 million people found a new job in an average month. it is not that there are no jobs out there. >> right a job loss number -- in other words, we are losing more jobs than we are getting. there are people getting jobs, but there are more people losing them. >> right. and in terms of what those numbers have looked like, since april of 2009, i think that the number of ...

And i hope we can get back to the talking about the numbers and where the types of numbers come from, because there sha lot of academic research on it. you look at for example individuals and one powerful study looks at individuals in germany, 42-year-olds eligible for 18 months of unemployment benefits and 41-year-olds can only collect for 12 months, so people have looked at how much longer do people stay unemployed as they approach and pass the 42nd birthday. so you see that they tend to stay unemployed for 6.5 months and then a jump up to 8 months in 42nd birthday. so that the type of evide...