Earlier this month, I wrote about how North Carolina cut off its extended unemployment benefits in July, only to see its job market take off in the months afterward. As the new Labor Department state employment data from last week reaffirm, the cuts don’t seem to have hurt the state’s economy at all, and might have even helped encourage job-seekers to take what was available.

This reality did not prevent President Obama from calling on Congress in Tuesday’s State of the Union to extend benefits, prolonging the six-year “emergency” measure. But that’s an old well to draw from, and it’s easy to see why a mildly unpopular Democrat in the late stages of his presidency would go there.