Unemployment is not welfare, it is insurance. Your employer, including the military, pays into a pool. People who lose their jobs are entitled to draw from that pool. As you realized, the payments from that pool end after a certain period of time. Finally, benefits and that length of time vary wildly by state. For example, Texas unemployment insurance pays a maximum of $465 per week for a maximum of 52 weeks. The "motivation to get a job" is that benefits will end after a certain time and that time is almost never able to be extended.
After unemployment benefits end, you are at the mercy of whatever local social services exist for you. In virtually all cases, as a result of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, if you are not totally disabled you must be doing something defined as "work," be it looking for work, going to school, or volunteering at an assigned location. That only lasts for so long, provided you are not disabled. At some point, usually between 6 and 9 months, benefits for people who are looking for work and who don't qualify for unemployment end.
Then there is what is known as the benefits cliff. Almost all benefit programs have a bright line limit between "qualified" and "not qualified." It is some multiple of the federal poverty line based on household size. If a person or household earns even $1 more than that line, benefits are stopped on that date, even if that is a net loss for the person. A common example: A single parent can receive a $400 child care subsidy provided total household income is less than $19,000 per year. The parent makes $18,500 per year ($9.25/hour) and can pay for rent, food, and transportation out of the rest, but the child care subsidy is a definite need. If the parent works full time and receives a raise of $0.25 per hour, or $500 per year, the child care benefit is immediately forfeit, resulting in a new net expense of $4,300 to the parent. What incentive is there to then take the raise and for the parent to work to improve?
In the US, you are only eligible for unemployment if you had a job for a prolonged period before collecting it. Thus people who are permanently not working are not eligible for unemployment. A student, for example, who has just graduated and never held a job CANNOT receive unemployment. It is intended to be a temporary benefit to compensate for losing a job so you can survive until you find your next job. Furthermore, generally your unemployment payments are proportional to the income you received from your job - the more highly paid your job was, the higher the unemployment payment (since the unemployment insurance tax would also have been proportionally higher).
Welfare is different. Welfare is considered an entitlement - you do not ever have to work to receive it. Americans justify unemployment insurance as "not being lazy" because the people who receive it had at some point held a job.
Minor nit: Welfare isn't an entitlement, it's a "benefit." Entitlements are programs paid for through taxes--like Social Security and Medicare--with the expectation that they'll eventually be paid back to the taxpayer. That's why phrases like "entitlement reform" mean cuts or changes to Social Security and the old-age medical system.
Social welfare programs here are paid out of general budget allocations. This is for things like food stamps, disability payments (one exception, dealt with in a moment), housing assistance, Medicaid, and similar.
Unemployment payouts, Social Security ("Old age pension"), Social Security Disability, and Medicare are paid for through dedicated taxes and charges on employers (in the case of unemployment). That's why we usually call them insurance or entitlements. Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, is paid as part of Social Security itself.
"Unemployment payouts, Social Security ("Old age pension"), Social Security Disability, and Medicare are paid for through dedicated taxes and charges on employers (in the case of unemployment). That's why we usually call them insurance or entitlements. Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, is paid as part of Social Security itself."
And are you able to choose not to pay into such a scheme? If not, then it might as well be a plain tax that happens to be labelled as separate.
I would distinguish insurance vs. welfare by whether you can collect them without having paid into them first. That would make Social Security, SSDI and unemployment insurance programs while food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid are welfare programs. Whether they are paid with a special tax or from the general fund is orthogonal to whether they are insurance or welfare.
After unemployment benefits end, you are at the mercy of whatever local social services exist for you. In virtually all cases, as a result of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, if you are not totally disabled you must be doing something defined as "work," be it looking for work, going to school, or volunteering at an assigned location. That only lasts for so long, provided you are not disabled. At some point, usually between 6 and 9 months, benefits for people who are looking for work and who don't qualify for unemployment end.
Then there is what is known as the benefits cliff. Almost all benefit programs have a bright line limit between "qualified" and "not qualified." It is some multiple of the federal poverty line based on household size. If a person or household earns even $1 more than that line, benefits are stopped on that date, even if that is a net loss for the person. A common example: A single parent can receive a $400 child care subsidy provided total household income is less than $19,000 per year. The parent makes $18,500 per year ($9.25/hour) and can pay for rent, food, and transportation out of the rest, but the child care subsidy is a definite need. If the parent works full time and receives a raise of $0.25 per hour, or $500 per year, the child care benefit is immediately forfeit, resulting in a new net expense of $4,300 to the parent. What incentive is there to then take the raise and for the parent to work to improve?