The Improved Job Market & the Long-Term Unemployed
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-02-09/improved-job-market-long-term-unemployed
![In this Aug. 31, 2011 file photo, some of an estimated 4,000 people wait to enter a job fair called the "For The People Jobs Initiative," where job seekers met employers, job counselors, skills trainers and others, at Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles.
- (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)](http://thedianerehmshow.org/sites/thedianerehmshow.org/files/imagecache/620xH/images/headline/020812_longtermunemployed_0.jpg "In this Aug. 31, 2011 file photo, some of an estimated 4,000 people wait to enter a job fair called the "For The People Jobs Initiative," where job seekers met employers, job counselors, skills trainers and others, at Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles.
- (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)")
In this Aug. 31, 2011 file photo, some of an estimated 4,000 people wait to enter a job fair called the "For The People Jobs Initiative," where job seekers met employers, job counselors, skills trainers and others, at Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles.
(AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
The U.S. economy got some good news last week when the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in almost three years. But the job growth hasn’t reached over five million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months. Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke this week said record levels of the long-term unemployed will alter this country’s job market for the worse for the foreseeable future. Just who are those left behind as the economy improves and what are their options to get past their seemingly hopeless situation? Diane and her panel look at the challenges for the long-term unemployed.
Guests
William Rodgers III
professor of public policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University
Stephen Rose
research professor at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
Ingrid Schroeder
director of the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative
Derek Thompson
senior editor at the Atlantic
Comments
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Everyone I know is either over-worked or unemployed; I think we need to work, but we don't need jobs.
The presence of a large number of the unemployed in a society which doesn't seem to be starving or suffering exposure, to the most part, would indicate to me that there's a lot of work we don't need doing.
There is still work that needs doing by humans---because of our screwed-up priorities (power and guns and religion, basically)---we have not advanced to the desirable point where that would not be so...but is making our necessities, small luxuries, and security dependent on forcing ourselves to go somewhere to take orders from someone else really the best way of parcelling it out?
(And, no, this is not a Bolschewik screed: having the State as your boss is generally even worse than someone without as large of an army and police force. )
All this discussion about stimulating the economy and trying to adjust the unemployment numbers…. is rich. You cannot change anything about an irrational system of beliefs. You might just as well be reading tea leaves.
You see….modern capitalism (corporate feudalism) is a funny thing. For some improbable reason it gets equated with freedom and individualism. In reality, the goal of capitalism (as a theory) isn’t to liquidate individualism or to manipulate masses outright. The reason why it eliminates jobs to increase productivity is a by-product of the profit motive. And theories and motives don’t care, they can have no empathy. The Profit Motive is simply a blind dumb animal. The love of and adherence to Market forces is no better than a religion…. a belief system with no rational basis. And we all know how religions have enslaved mankind to all manner of irrational actions. In this case simply substitute the market and the all mighty brand in place of god the father, son and holy ghost. There’s no difference whatsoever.
Capitalism co-opts and commoditizes all things, to the point where nothing and no one can escape it. There is really only one true freedom left under corporate feudalism and that is suicide, but you can only exercise it once.
The BLS reported this week the top 5 titles with the biggest projected increases in numerical terms are: RNs, retail sales, home health aids, personal care aids and office clerks. Less than 20% will require a BA or BS, 85% will require no relevant job experience.
Low skill = low pay.
This could be our future, which will most likely "trickle up", eventually affecting our national competitiveness.
We need to eliminate the minimum wage. Entry level positions are desperately needed for NO skill workers, and inner cities are loaded with those. An employer that wants to stay in business can never afford to operate a business carrying employees that cannot deliver at least as much as it costs to hire and keep them employed.
The general public has no idea of the devastating effects on individuals and their families these recessions cause. I fell victim to the Reagan recession,and never recovered.Earning $35K in 1983,to $15k in 2008 and some food stamps. I cannot begin to tell you how many college grads I worked alongside,who had the misfortune to graduate during this time and NEVER realizing the earning power their education promised to give them.Bring our jobs home,PLEASE !!!
I believe a large part of the problem with unemployment when trying to find a job is the perception employers have of "wanting what other employers have". It's a perception and ultimately a value judgement. The belief is if someone is employed they must be valuable. And if not, then they're not valuable. This carries over to many types of relationships and is an narrow minded view on reality.
Appropriate Skills= Cheap. There's the definition that they're looking for.
God how can they be so obtuse....
What are the Appropriate Skills?
Why, Diane, it is the ability to be servile, grateful, and give them your skills for nothing. These are very often Jim Crow Law States, like Virginia, that want an engineer, or skilled technician to help them think their way out of their own marketing degrees of fairy tales. 'Oh, I need to sell something someone wants? You have any ideas, yon' peon."
Couldn't withholding advanced education degrees ultimately become grounds for dismissal? It would bother me to mislead on a job application as a dismissal or similar would be very hard to explain, adding more difficulty to your job search.
Nice Show. Since 1977 I have been in the construction trade. In 1988 I started my own construction business. Never did I expect to see my services reduced to a commodity where people expect me to work for pennies. My industry, home improvement is very slow. There are no jobs (at least that pay a living wage). At 55 years of age I am starting over with a new handyman business an am working harder than ever.
I just got my PhD last year and it has been rough. Fortunately, I am not fully unemployed, but I do feel underemployed as an adjunct community college professor teaching one class a semester. I just got my W-2 for last year and made a little over $4,000. They keep telling me that if someone else retires that there is a chance for an actual job, but I'm getting really tired after so many years of graduate school of "paying my dues" and being told that my degree will eventually pay off. Particularly in academia, with the economy the way it is, fewer people are moving into retirement fully. While I understand this, I feel like my own career growth is somewhat blocked by this.
I heard your guest say that many Americans have the false impression that the unemployed are lazy. But I hear again and again commentators on NPR say that we need illegal aliens to stay in America because they do the jobs that Americans won't do. Isn't this a contradiction.
Children have larger than life dreams for what they want to become when they grow up. What does a parent advise a child to be gainfully employed in the next 16 years? Bachelor degree required? Masters degree? PhD? In what fields?
I have a naive question: If we use labor-saving devicese to manufacture our goods, why are we so surprised that there is more unemployhment?
Perhaps the Luddites had a point!
Once again, the discussion of this urgent issue on the Diane Rehm Show is decent as far as it goes, but the problem is the timid and shriveled horizon of assumptions in which it takes place.
Half an hour into the discussion and there has not been a single mention of the possibility of a government-sponsored jobs program to help the chronically unemployed, or more importantly, any mention of WHY this very option is never given a serious hearing in our current political environment, amidst the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
We have a president who essentially agrees with his Republican opponents that only the private sector is a 'true engine' for job growth. Amazing isn't it that we have such a bipartisan consensus on such a crucial issue, even as this very president is attacked as being a Marxist. Wow, that's some Marxist!
Why this bias for a private sector that, by all accounts, isn't really all it's cracked up to be as a jobs creator?
Perhaps our media elite, like our political elite, have an interest is maintaining the illusion of this primacy of the private sector over a state-sponsored sector.
Remember they get tax write off for the expense of recruiting, and maintaining a false front that they can't find qualified people, while they run the ones they have into the ground, and 'keep their friends and family' on the payroll doing'recruiting' and 'having lunch' and 'seeing people.' You don't want to work for these types of 'job creators', they are the marketing class who take credit for everyone else ideas.
Jean Whiting wrote:
I have a naive question: If we use labor-saving devicese to manufacture our goods, why are we so surprised that there is more unemployhment?
Perhaps the Luddites had a point!
So you are suggesting we should go back to inefficient manufacturing and completely give up on the global market, how far back should we go exactly? We all grow our own food, we shut down colleges because we can train our sons and daughters ourselves. And why worry about cars we can each build our own wagon and have it pulled by our children instead of animals. Your comment is extremely poorly thought out, we are and should always be surging forward not standing still, your statement is actually offensive.
from Houston-
Diane thanks for going deeper on all the issues you cover!
On today's show:
1) Unemployment rates as published by the Gov are bogus. There are SO very many Baby Boomers that have shifted out of the job market as we know it. YET THEY ARE STILL IN NEED OF INCOME and are trying to come up with alternative means to get it.
2) I worked for a Fortune 100 company in Mgmt. I know for a fact that workers over age 50 are seen as a high cost "overhead problem" in most cases. Your guest that mentioned that "the cost" of older workers is an issue is RIGHT! Companies are constantly looking to backfill with younger lower cost employees. Thanks to new systems and ways of transacting business many of our jobs don't need "the long learned experience" like they use to...the learning curves aren't as long nor as steep as they once were.
Furthermore, where age/experience is a valid advantage then you find Mgmt is often short sighted and pushed by O&O GOALS. Thus not giving credit to the older employee's knowledge base pays off in the short term for the manager needing to get rewarded for reaching cost reduction goals, e.g. replacing older workers with cheaper younger ones.
....and guess what...this "lack of available talent so we must allow more fgn worker visas" story is VERY driven by this. Boot out the old and take in the cheaper freshly educated folks from the 2nd & 3rd World because they will work harder for cheaper.
I have an MBA in Finance from a top school and advanced certification plus over 20 years experience, but high level jobs are extremely scarce in a blue collar town like Louisville, KY. Now out of work over 2 years, I see no end in sight as every interview wants to know what in the world I have been doing for over 2 years. It is brutal out here for highly qualified candidates, too.
Yes, it is their own fault, those undsereving poor, those food stamp people!
This is a class divide, a cultural divide, that keeps the poor in poor neighborhoods, and beat down psychologically by being looked down upon.
I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and believe you me, Our 'Help" was someone who taught me how to behave, whose dignity and knowledge I envied as a child. I didn't grow up to be a Tidewater Princess. I wanted to be Leola's Daughter.
So this business of not being able to find people who can present themselves appropriately. It didn't used to be that way, when people shared the same roads, and public schools and institutions. Now that we have the "Private School CLass', like Virginia, and the "Look Away From Class', like the Bus Riders, who don't need restrooms. (Are they not Human, too?) You get what you got. The Downtrodden. It is the Virginia Way. They will not share, and their 'Gateway' approach to transportation, is only to make sure the upper class is not inconvenienced , and can get away from it all, in their Bravo Channel lives. Oh, and during Hurricanes, they will be out of here first, with the most. Katrina by the Bay, Anyone
It's interesting that the for the most part the socialist E.U. is recommending exactly the opposite for BANKRUPT Greece (19% unemployment) as the liberal discussion panel offers on this show today to get it's house in order.
The government has never taken any step to stop cheap foreign labor competition ($0.06 per hour in China). Recall the days when Congress placed China on most favorite nation for imports. It encouraged to ship jobs offshore. This has been going on since 1980’s. The Bush administration even stopped SEC from getting overseas employment data from corporations. The low labor and real estate costs in foreign countries have made CEO and Wall Street extremely rich because they hold the stocks of the companies that produce overseas. How much has Warren Buffett invested in China? Even tax payers’ money is being spent to produce the classified defense products in Mexico. Due to upcoming election the government is trying to paint a rosy picture of the economy with make belief unemployment data.
I have avoided posting here for more than a month. It was voluntary so I could listen and read in a more removed way. I chose to comment today because this was a superb edition of DRShow. The panel was informative and reasonable. They did not have to contend with some politically charged pitbull barking the same talking points like a robo-call. Diane was at ease and made her insightful contributions steering the exchanges in a constructive direction.
Callers were all polite and had useful stories and ideas to share. If all discourse in this nation could match this ideal and archetypal DRShow we could come to agreements on how to solve all our problems in a week. DRShow should remember what you did in preparing for this very special edition and try to do it again each broadcast. Please limit panelists from ideologically charged organizations. Please do not tout unworthy books. If you're going to host historical figures and celebrities be sure they will have meaningful substance in their presentations. This becomes all the more important in an election year when so much is at stake. If you can produce a foreign affairs edition of today's quality I'd be especially impressed and thankful. Thanks for listening to a fan of 35 years. Your friend, Grady
It's true that large companies are using part-time jobs to get away with not paying worker's benefits! For the past year, I have been working for Samsung Telecommunications America and Samsung Electronics America through their outsourced sales company Mosaic Sales Solutions, located in Dallas, TX. I get Sammie shirts, ID cards and lanyards, but I do not have a continuous job, layed off in August, then a few hours since then; LG Electronics, Inc., through their outsourced sales companies Action Link and Slingshot, located in Akron, OH, Activision through their sales company Premium Retail services, Inc., and now Hallmark through the same PRS. My father's corporate job was actually at American Airlines, where he had the Full-Time work and ability to own his own home and raise a family of 7 children! They just declared bankruptcy! Is this our future? I am happy to piece together 5 part-time jobs to try to equal 1 full-time job, but there are slow times with no work, or slow Q1 times, like now...
I don't know if it's because of the failure of a liberal president, but Diane seems to have thrown in the towel in regards to representing issues in a fair way. It's left wing liberalism all the way these days. Were lucky to hear a muted voice at all now from a small government perspective.
monte: "It's interesting that the for the most part the socialist E.U. is recommending exactly the opposite for BANKRUPT Greece (19% unemployment) as the liberal discussion panel offers on this show today to get it's house in order"
Where did you get the idea that the EU, which operates almost exclusively at the behest of its big banks, is "socialist" ?
And by the way, as to the 'liberal' panel on this show, you realize it's the savage austerity measures that the EU troika have extracted from Greece that is actually the true example of 'liberal' economics at work. In other words, it's 'conservative' in our provincial American political lexicon. You realize that, right?
And so it seems to all callers from Super-Pac call centers. Are you insured, young man or woman? Do your hours accomodate your lifestyle? I am sure they do.
I was on hold but didn't make the cut. I loved the show, it made me feel a little better about my predicament.
I've been downsized twice in the last 2 years.
As a 52 year old male with my MBA I believe both times it was to save benefit costs.
Providing Health care insurance for my family(not me) is my biggest concern. Cobra is 1350 a month and only lasts 18 months. If we were to divorce my family could be guaranteed coverage for 36 months.
If I was a government employee I could access our 401k w/o the additional 10% penalty at 50. If we divorce the penalty is waived. We are currently in the 15% tax bracket so the 10% penalty is significant. IRA's are penalty free at 59.5.. The government needs to change this for those of us that are let go to allow for penalty free withdrawals.
As Michael the manager in an office episode so eloquently stated you expect your company to
scr-w you you don't expect your(girlfriend) government.
I'm all for Obama and the healthcare changes he's bringing us. We need the changes in healthcare and 401'ks!
Most job applicant denials are to those over 45 say using the excuse you are over qualified or under qualified. It is a legal age discrimination tactic. Worker over 45 in most businesses are less represented based on their age demographics than those under 45. The constant cry by business, we can't find qualified applicants is very questionable. There are millions out of work, can so many of them be as unqualified as we are lead to believe? Many suffer from being over the desired age. It has to do with health insurance burdens and the idea they are set in their ways. They don't understand, most hungry men/women will adjust to their employers needs.
Will McJunkin wrote: Too clever by half !