Long-Term Unemployment Is Turning Jobless Into Pariahs

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-03/long-term-unemployment-is-turning-jobless-into-pariahs.html

Long-term unemployment is one of the most vexing problems the U.S. faces, and today’s jobs report shows all-too-meager progress in fixing it.

The U.S. created 165,000 new jobs in April, pushing down the unemployment rate to 7.5 percent from March’s 7.6 percent. But as of the end of April, 4.4 million Americans, or 37 percent of the unemployed, had been without a job for 27 weeks or longer, barely better than March’s 39 percent. The U.S. can’t afford to write off more than 4 million people who would like to work but haven’t for more than six months.

Long-term joblessness peaked in April 2010 at 6.7 million, so the picture might seem to be improving. Hidden within that number is this troubling fact: The average unemployed person has been out of work for 36.5 weeks. That’s not much better than the December 2011 duration of 40.7 weeks, which was the longest since World War II. Long-term unemployment at the start of the recession in December 2007 was 1.3 million people, and the average duration was 16.6 weeks.

Terrible things happen to people when they are out of work for long periods, numerous studies show. Beyond a sharp drop in income, long-term unemployment is associated with higher rates of suicide, cancer (especially among men) and divorce. The children of the long-term unemployed also show an increased probability of having to repeat a grade in school.

[HiPointDem]

1. kr. the ghettoization of the working class. everything you used to associate with appalachia

or inner-city ghettoes coming to your hometown.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[snappyturtle]

3. Don't you just love two solutions offerred in the article?

Summation of the following: More tax breaks for corporations and creation of permanent, subsidized Kelly girl jobs.

Finding out what works is crucial. Other solutions should be tried, including giving preference to the long-term unemployed when filling federal government jobs. In addition, President Barack Obama should ask Congress to approve tax breaks for companies that hire the long-term unemployed.

Work-share programs, in which employees accept reduced hours when demand is slack in exchange for unemployment insurance to compensate for lost wages, has worked in other countries. The U.S. should also experiment with state-based clearinghouses that connect employers with job-seekers in other states and subsidize the moving expenses.

=======================
Giving preference to the long term unemployed? The article said that is not done....much to the contrary. I wonder what the author thinks would reverse that? All, non-solutions. imho

[xchrom]

4. i thought it was startling -- but i think our response to this whole mess is startling. nt

[snappyturtle]

7. If "our" means the gov't.'s response...where do I start? All I am aware of is

trillions going to banks, other corps, and the MIC. The gov't is
doing its best to take away the social safety net under pinnings and
throw the "pariahs" (what an insulting term) to the wind. What does
the 1% care? They can't see the suffering from their gilded gated
multiple residences.

What's it going to take to get a real turn around? The vast geological
area of the country works to our disadvantage. Small countries can
demonstrate and get noticed by their governments. Here they just
bring out the troops to quell small uprisings. I am very discouraged.

[xchrom]

8. we are in agreement. nt

[Yo_Mama]

5. I'm worried that in many cases it is older/somewhat disabled persons

In yesterday's employment report (on the whole, good), one thing that leaped out at me was the duration of unemployment section:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm

If you scroll down you'll see it. Less than 5 weeks +10K, 5-14 weeks +10K, 15-26 +230K.

I'm afraid that in today's environment, the 50ish are being shoved out. A lot of the people in the long-term unemployed bracket are exiting by retiring, but I'm afraid we've got another cohort of older job losers that just aren't able to find anything. Now that initial claims have fallen to normal levels, I'm more concerned to see this.

[marmar]

6. k/r

[MannyGoldstein]

9. We know what works here. FDR showed us and Krugman confirms it.

But the Predator Class needs to have their "tough decision" - they seem to derive a sense of self-importance through inflicting awful pain.

[xchrom]

10. +1

[TBF]

13. I really do think that was Obama's error when taking over -

it should have been a focus on creating government jobs (if the private sector doesn't do it then you do it in the public sector w/tax money) rather than his half-baked "compromise" with health care. As it is we still don't have jobs but now we also have insurance folks can't afford. Jobs should have been the initial focus, and then a push for universal healthcare.

[Newest Reality]

11. The divide

between wealth and poverty is parting like the Red Sea. You can almost smell the brine. HomeSec is diligently patrolling in the gap and so, no trek to freedom from the Pharaoh for the pariahs

Well, there is only a desert -- the desert of the real -- out there anyway. Or so the viewers of the ornate and compelling debacle think. The media Simulation paints a digital picture of the hyperreal and that's more real than real, hence the viewers are massaged with a message that cajoles and compels them by way of the delusional character in their own heads.

A swirling, psychotropic veil of copious clouds of entertainment provide the craft of distraction as corporate cannibals exploit the vulnerable and naive. Sporting knives of influence and affluence, they roam the culture shaving skin and meat off of veterans and swooping like vultures dressed in Armani suits on old and young alike, ready to pluck out eyes and eager to clean the bones of the newly damned who need not wait for hell after death.

The vultures fly high. They travel over us all like feathered drones, ready to repossess what they never owned and with an authority they give themselves.

Like a cloud of unknowing, the transmitted, Empire of influence conceals the rapid and inescapable cleaving of binary America where the right to belong on the planet of your birth and survive with dignity is a matter of which side you are on.

The future is being forged, one commercial at a time. It leads to a world that makes Orwell seem like a humorist and Huxley's Brave New World appears conservative and naive by contrast.

Welcome to he fracture of the deal, the glaring and looming face of the persona of the steal the economic manufacturing of Heaven and Hell on earth and those adrift in Limbo are soon to be evicted.

[TBF]

12. They are not going to fix it - they are waiting for the baby boom generation to die off

Bill Clinton pretty much said so - I think it was on a Jon Stewart program but it could have been one of the other night-time hosts. He was asked about these issues and he opined a bit about how we don't have a long-term problem in this country but rather a crunch as the baby boom generation ages. He wasn't being malicious, just explaining what he thinks he sees (and included himself in that characterization obviously). I don't recall if they were discussing social security, jobs or healthcare but the subject obviously encompasses all three topics.

[winter is coming]

15. So, the long-term unemployed in their 50's can just starve.

Yeah, that's a viable plan.

And what about the 20-somethings who can't find a decent job? This is not a brief pothole; this is a calculated undermining of the 99% that will not end when the Boomers are gone.

[TBF]

16. It's certainly not my plan -

but yes that is what the capitalists in chief are saying ...

But they've only admitted to part of it - that they are waiting for the baby boomers to die off (and frantically trying to avoid paying for any healthcare for them), and you're definitely right that there is more behind it. They are also doing their best to globalize capitalism in every way. They want the cheapest labor they can get globally, and that is why jobs keep moving. They do need skilled laborers for some jobs (namely technical) but they don't care where those jobs are either - whether Seattle, Dublin, or Dehli.

My thought is that while we organize locally we also need to keep an eye on organizing globally. The more we can do that the better chance we have long-term (towards a global revolution).

[gulliver]

14. The Republicans still haven't given enough lives to their volcano god.

Republican austerity thinking and obstruction are the things holding us back. They are primitive, evidence-ignoring economic mystics. The economy improves in direct proportion to the political power of Keynesian thinking.