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BUSINESS

44% See More Government Hiring of Unemployed As Bad, 38% Say Good

The national unemployment rate dipped slightly in March but mostly because more Americans stopped looking for work. A survey conducted prior to the government jobs report shows that roughly a quarter of Americans still support long-term federal support for the chronic unemployed.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 16% believe the government should hire unemployed people who can’t find work for an extended period of time, while 11% favor extending unemployment benefits indefinitely. This combined 27% support for ongoing federal aid for the unemployed is up slightly from February’s low of 23% but is more similar to previous findings over the past year.

The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on April 1-2, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Fieldwork for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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