Government Causing High Unemployment Rates

I've made this argument before, but here it is again. The federal government has extended unemployment benefits to 99 weeks... almost two years. I've argued that if you subsidize something then you get more of it, and therefore the extended unemployment benefits are making the unemployment problem worse.

It looks like I may well have been right... as unemployment rates stay fairly steady at a high level, the nation's "unfilled jobs" percentage is rising.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=528201

Normally the job vacancy rate goes down after a recession, as the job market stabilizes. But January, the latest reported month, showed an 11% spike in unfilled jobs. Vacancies are now at 2.1% — the highest since February 2009, the Labor Department says.

That means people are not taking jobs as expected at this point in the recovery. Why? Because many don't have to — thanks in part to 99 weeks and counting of unemployment benefits.

Add to that record food stamp payments and other welfare, and the unemployed have been perversely incentivized to keep holding out for better jobs, rather than take less-than-desirable or lower-paying ones. Forty percent of jobless Americans have been out of work for at least 27 weeks — the highest level since the government began keeping records in the 1940s.

"Those programs subsidize unemployment," University of Chicago economist Robert Shimer says. "There could be good reasons to do it, but we should be clear on the cost. It has a pretty substantial impact."

And this means that the unemployment rates are as much as 1.5% HIGHER than they should be, entirely due to government's extending and increasing unemployment and welfare benefits.

And isn't THAT a great big kick in the pants?