It depends. Countries with actual safety nets often provide enough unemployment money that one isn't forced to take some ridiculous "just be employed" job while looking for their next real job.
Also there is lots of room between an "adequate" engineering salary and minimum or no wage...
Figuring out how to get underachieving academics into paying or even wellpaying jobs should be a higher priority in politics.
I did say that "pay for work is (within reason) preferred over pay for no work", all else being equal.
The term is "contrafreeloading", and is for example explained in Dan Ariely's coursera course: https://class.coursera.org/behavioralecon-001/lecture/57
By the way, "this person" in the lecture happens to be one of the preeminent researchers in behavioral economy...
So please try to refer me to a study that I can apply in a general office environment with people aged 30 and a real-world job so we can check the claim.