A recent survey by the Britain’s National Health Service found 352,000 households where no one has ever held a job. And 68 percent of the adults in those households said they don’t want one. Generous unemployment benefits and welfare subsidies — including $34.4 billion spent annually on housing, with some families receiving as much as $160,000 to maintain posh London flats — have combined with job-killing minimum-wage increases to make finding work in that nation either a dicey or unattractive proposition.

Before we scoff at the Brits’ employment troubles too loudly, however, we should mind our own. Between endless unemployment extensions and federal policies destroying entry-level employment opportunities, the United States is at risk of entrenching unemployment on this side of the Atlantic.