Posted on 01/21/2008 7:59:33 AM PST by xtinct
An unusually large share of workers have been out a job for more than six months even as overall unemployment has remained low, a little-noted weakness in the labor market that analysts said threatens to intensify the impact of the unfolding economic downturn.
In November, nearly 1.4 million people -- almost one in five of those unemployed -- had been jobless for at least 27 weeks, the juncture when unemployment insurance benefits end for most recipients. That is about twice the level of long-term unemployment before the 2001 recession.
The problem is ensnaring a broader swath of workers than before. Once concentrated among manufacturing workers and those with little work history, education or skills, long-term unemployment is growing most rapidly among white-collar and college-educated workers with long work experience, studies have found, making the problem difficult for policymakers to address even as it grows more urgent.
"What has happened is a polarization of the labor market. It was very strong at the very top and very strong until recently at the bottom," said Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University. "But in the recent weak recovery, and now recession, demand has been very weak" for jobs in the middle.
Caroline Dixon never contemplated any of that when she resigned in April after nine months as a program officer with the Spina Bifida Association. She left because the job was "a bad fit," and she said she was confident that the economy was strong and she would soon find work. For a long time, she never stopped in the unemployment office on Naylor Road near her Southeast Washington home.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I didn’t go to college to get a job. I went to college to be an educated person. I never took a class I didn’t like, and that includes a couple that I failed.
I don’t think anyone does that any more. Too bad, their loss.
Unemployment insurance. The alcoholics friend.
Naylor Road... just a hair east of Anacostia.
Charming part of DC.
The jobs are there, but they are not for White males descended from Europeans.
Thank you dems and Bush.
If you do not supply a skill that the market demands, you will struggle to find a job.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Long ago I acquired skills which I expect to be in demand again soon! Among these skills are, growing my own food, cooking over a wood fire, stretching a dollar, entertaining myself by cutting and splitting firewood etc. I should be well fixed.
“The flip side of that is if I’m an employer and I get even a whiff of that idea going through a potential employee’s head I have only two options...”
Which is why you always make your employer think they’ve got your undying loyalty, a fiction usually matched only by your employer’s claims of actually giving a crap about their employees, when in fact you know they’d cut you lose in a second if it suited their purposes.
What’s your deal? My advice is one of SANITY. I would grit my teeth, bite my tongue, and hate my job my entire life, if I couldn’t find a better opportunity. I am a family man, and putting food on the table, clothes on their backs, and providing shelter is priority number 1. You know how selfish it would be for me to quit just because I didn’t like it? A single person could if they want to, but it’s just plain stupid.
Highly skilled in what? Welding? Dump truck driving?
Ms. Dixon did not "lose" her job - she up and quit, without having another job secured. Tough luck. She needs to quit whining.
And the beat goes on......doom.
Amen. As long as we think EITHER of the two major Parties are looking out for Americans, we’re screwed.
Not any more. UI isn't enough anymore to keep anyone afloat financially.
If people like her can't find work, what does that say for white males with the same qualifications? I'd say, "not good."
Sometimes stupidity hurts.
These things are not unknown to you, nor unknown to you although evidently distant from you, is how bad a job can be for a person.
How valuable is a person's health? If a person is very miserable or depressed in a job -- from stress, from boredom, from being ostracized, from abuse, from a deep sense of not being "all you can be", that person is not sane. Not healthy. Sick.
When you switched jobs it may well be -- your responses seem to suggest it -- that you were looking for career advancement. You switched positions for career reasons. Not health reasons! Yes, let's talk about SANITY.
I asked questions -- which you refuse to answer, and yes, perhaps the answer is too personal. So? Generalize, give some reasoned answer, not a denial. Your answer was a denial.
Did you leave your prior positions in order to keep your sanity or in order to advance your career? Choose one! The answer that best fits, please.
What sort of crazy career do you have that a job threatens your sanity?
If a person’s only responsibility is himself and he wants to take a risk, go for it. For anyone who has family dependent on him, what you suggest is selfishness.
BurbankKarl paid a price to stay morally sane. A person can’t work in with a company of crooks and expect to stay morally sane. He quit a job with crooks. But he has from it some current sanity, bought and paid for.
“(1) Just how unhappy were you in any job that you thereupon left for another? By unhappy I mean by some externalized measure known to you. For example did you get ever depressed to the point of counseling or medication, unable to otherwise engage life — withdrawing from previously favorite friends, pastimes, clubs, hobbies, etc., or even did you ever become physically sick from job stress?”
Yes — In one case I had an abusive boss, who felt threatened by me. (I could have replaced him and he was not terribly competent.) That was high stress, with little room for error. In another, I put on 25 pounds (I eat as a stress-coping mechanism.) There were other jobs, where I remained, where I also encountered high-stress situations. (One in particular was another abusive supervisor. In that case, however, circumstances were such that I successfuly built a case against the supervisor, and *he* was replaced, obviating the need to change jobs.)
“(2) Just how “misfit” were you in any job you had? Again, if you could give some externalized measure, to go beyond inner feelings.”
Beside the abusive boss, there was one job where I did not belong to the “in-group.” The “in-group” had all worked at one specific government agency together before cashing in and becoming government contractors. Those outside it got crumbs as far as the work went. After a year it became apparent that I would only be used for the maintenance work, instead of the technical stuff I had been hired to do, so I began looking elsewhere.
As it was I had just received an offer from another company when my then-curent employer found out I was looking for work, and began procedings to fire me for cause (how dare he be so ungrateful to us?). I went on to a very successful 11-year stretch at my new company, where I received numerous promotions and awards. Had I waited until I got fired before looking for work, or left because “I didn’t fit,” the new company probably would not have hired me.
So yeah, my entire work history has illustrated (to me, at least) that only an idiot leaves one job before landing the next one. Your experiences may differ, but I’ll go by mine.
I hear porn pays well. lol.
That's speaking of extreme cases of risk to health, which are NOT rare, btw. Better to live another day as a poor man and a poor family.
I also suggest that people delude themselves about how acceptable, or tolerable a bad job is just because it pays well, and their spending habits and family's spending habits have adjusted to same. And by "bad job" in this latter case I include jobs where you are not all that you can be -- were your personal "pursuit of happiness" has stalled, become atrophied. In those cases, I beg you to quit, come hazard and havoc, yet bear to it and grow.
And then, if you are too sensitively constituted to withstand such a bold course, then at least have some respect and even admiration for those who do! For they are still trying, were you have stopped, and found "tolerable" to be enough of a comfort.
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