When long-term unemployment becomes self-perpetuating (No, they are NOT lazy)

Washington Post ^ | 03/25/2014 | Catherine Rampell

[SeekAndFind]

Say it with me: The long-term unemployed are not lazy. Nor are they coddled, hammocked or enjoying a coordinated, taxpayer-funded vacation.

They are, however, extremely unlucky — and getting unluckier by the day.

Take Renardo Gomez of Fitchburg, Mass. In three years, Gomez ricocheted from a stable hospital job of 20 years that paid $34,000 annually to a sudden layoff to a series of low-paying, short-term gigs interspersed with longer and longer spells of unemployment. He expects an eviction notice soon.

“I keep putting in 110 percent and getting 10 percent back,” he says.

A new Brookings Institution study that tracks the fates of those unlucky workers who don’t manage to find stable new jobs in their first few weeks of unemployment suggests that this post-layoff tailspin is distressingly common.

It was already known that the longer workers have been out of a job, the lower their chance of finding work in the coming month. The Brookings paper — by the former Obama administration economist Alan Krueger and his Princeton colleagues Judd Cramer and David Cho — took this analysis a step further: What about (gulp) these workers’ longer-run prospects?

It turns out that from 2008 to 2012, only one in 10 people who were already long-term unemployed in a given month had returned to “steady, full-time employment” by the time government surveyors checked in on them a little more than a year later. “Steady” in this case means that they were working for at least four consecutive months. And the other nine in 10 workers? They were still out of work, toiling in part-time or transitory jobs or had dropped out of the labor force altogether.

[khelus]

Mcdonald’s isn’t gonna hire me nor would I want to work there.

I went through the application process for Michael’s (arts and crafts store here). It was a holiday position.

So I answered their 200 questions on the site, took the 10-min quiz and never heard from them. Everywhere you go, it’s apply online.

This is what the POS in charge wants. Lowest common denominator. Can’t lift up the savages, so reduce us all to their level.

That is the fine print in equal outcomes for everyone.

You can only achieve equal outcomes by bringing everyone down to the lowest level. It is impossible to bring everyone up to the highest level.

It's why DeBlasio in NYC want to shut down high performing charter schools.

FYI those who assume there's a job available for anyone who wants one are living in the distant past. The job market started softening in the late 90's and hasn't improved since.

Our job market at all levels has been decimated by guest workers, illegals, brandy new immigrants who have no problem working at a salaries so low they need government assistance to survive, and off shoring.

[BizBroker]

“For all you know, the other 20 places hired kids within one day of their applications.
Just sayin’ ...”

Or the other 20 places hired no one, so they could then complain that there are no qualified applicants... Just sayin’