Long-Term Unemployment Despair
While many observers cheered the fact that the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.7 percent in February, taking it as a sign that job creation could be right around the corner, others were quick to point out there are still millions of Americans suffering through long-term unemployment who will have a difficult time getting back on their feet even when the economy recovers.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, a full 8.8 million Americans have been unemployed for at least three-and-a-half months. In fact, nearly 60 percent of the unemployed have been without a job for at least 15 weeks, an all time high.
"Whether you say the jobs market is improving or getting worse, there are people who will say you're crazy," Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute, told CNNMoney.com. "That's because there are two Americas, and they're both right."
Those with the least amount of time spent unemployed are finding it easier to find work than those who have suffered through long-term unemployment.
One reason could be the fact that many of those experiencing long-term unemployment are typically employed in sectors that have been hit extremely hard by the current recession. Two of the hardest hit areas of the economy have been manufacturing and construction. Typically, those areas of employment require less education and skill than other jobs, leaving many without the tools to transition into another field.
The finance sector has been battered by the recession as well, losing countless jobs in the past two years. Much like construction, the finance sector was over employed because of the real estate bubble. When it burst, both those sectors began to downsize, and most believe that those jobs will never return.
"Those areas that were over capacity will have no bounce back anytime soon," Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist for ChannelCapitalResearch.com, told CNNMoney.com.
Nor will the millions of manufacturing jobs, which, unlike construction and finance jobs, have not been lost due to the recession, but rather because of America’s failed trade policies.
"Ten years ago, we had 18 million or so people in manufacturing; now, it's a little over 10 million. So you have 8 million jobs gone and they're not coming back, ever." Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, told CBS News.
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This Work, Long-Term Unemployment Despair, by Dustin Ensinger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
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Tier 5 Assistance is needed for the Long Term Unemployed. We need more Tiers and/or more weeks added to existing Tiers.
Neither H.R.4691 or H.R.4213 will help the 15 million unemployed who have already exhausted all Tiers.
WE NEED EVERYONE’S HELP to get more Tiers added and/or more weeks added to existing Tiers.
Please keep calling and emailing your congressmen and senators to finish the job.
I suggest increasing existing Tiers to 26 weeks each.
And, those who exhaust all Tiers should be able to get food stamps AND cash assistance even if they don’t have any kids, when applying for public assistance.
Go to the following links and modify your closings as I have or in any way you see fit. It links automatically send emails to Prez, V-Prez, your Senators and Rep.
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Increase existing Tiers to 26 weeks each. Sincerely,
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We dont need extenstions on tier 4 of unemployment bennifits. Many of us have run out of that and more each week are as well. Thats why u see jobless claims going down. Not because they went back to work. We need tier 5 and more if things keep going the way they are. And to those who say screw us, no more checks. U should be deported for being so inconsiderate. I hoppe you find yourself in my shoes a yr from now living off of handouts cause youo cant get a job when u have skills to use in one. Those handouts dont keep me from loosing my truck or my bedroom and living room groups.
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We don't need welfare, we need more jobs! Rather than hand outs for doing nothing, why doesn't the government create jobs for our citizens. Our parks need work, our roads need work. Stop the welfare checks, outsourcing and the H1-B visas and everybody wins!
Without extremely high import tariffs, US workers must compete with foreign workers at very low foreign wage scales. The US government should build manufacturing plants to make various consumer products in sequence one product at a time, i.e. refrigerators, washing machines, clothing, TV's, electronics, tires, auto parts, hand tools, power tools, machine tools, appliances, and etc.
How about passing laws to prohibit the export of service jobs such as accounting, telemarketing, customer service, computer aided drafting, engineering, etc. that are now provided by workers overseas through the internet.
Eventually all of the consumer goods that we import could be made in the USA. We should then impose extremely high import taxes that are high enough so that these US made products are always less expensive to the consumer than the same imported product.
These plants should periodically and/or constantly be for sale based upon periodic open public competitive bidding, but at a minimum sale price at least equal to as much as the government investment, and with terms of cash only without any creative financing. There should not be any leveraged or other creative financing for purchase allowed by the government. Only cash sales should be allowed.
The management should know about making the products, not creative accounting and/or creative financing.
Yes, the consumer will pay several times the price for the particular US manufactured product, but maybe this might avert a second bloody American revolution.
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