Ok, well I'm with WYSIWYG - I would very much like to have a look at the rationale/evidence base that indicates that this would work.

Mostly because I don't believe that evidence base exists - and this is why.

There's a thing called immediate gratification bias - which is where people will choose a lesser but more immediate reward over a larger reward that they have to wait for. A study was done with children and lollies - where children were given a choice between one lolly now or two lollies if they wait. There was a strong correlation between the children's ability to wait and take the greater reward, and their success later in life.

The $2000 is the 2-lolly scenario. The newly employed person needs to delay their gratification (ie "giving up" on work) for the far-away candy of the money. But it's seems highly likely that populations of people who are more able to delay their gratification (ie choose to hang in there for the $2k) are more likely to already be successfully educated/employed. There is likely to be a much lower proportion of gratification-delayers in the long-term unemployed. That seems like a flaw in the logic of the proposal.

Besides which, the $2K scheme assumes that job retention is some kind of personal choice scenario. I'm not convinced that it is. I think there's a whole lot of other barriers and issues involved and chucking tiny amounts of money at individuals will do nothing to address these issues.