The silent jobless

[Liberal_in_LA]

The silent jobless
Who's still unemployed? Mainly those — women, young people, blacks — who lack the political clout to get government to spur job growth.

You'd think the American public would be demanding government action: a new WPA for the long-term unemployed, a second stimulus to make up for the shortfall in purchasing power, stronger safety nets. But we're not hearing much clamor for any of this. One reason is that those who remain unemployed have little or no political clout.

Who are they?

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But women who fill the ranks of teachers, public health professionals and social workers are in bad shape. These jobs continue to be slashed by state and local governments. Public schools alone accounted for nearly 40% of the nation's total public sector job losses in the last year. From March 2010 to March 2011, women lost 214,000 public sector jobs, compared with a loss of 115,000 public jobs by men. Women also tend to be real estate agents, appraisers and home decorators. Because the housing market is still in the dumps and home sales continue to drop across the country, these jobs are also in short supply and are unlikely to come back anytime soon.

Unmarried mothers are having a particularly difficult time getting back jobs because their work was heavily concentrated in the retail, restaurant and hotel sectors. Many of these jobs disappeared when consumers reduced their discretionary spending, and they won't come back in force until consumers start spending more again. According to a new report by the California Budget Project, the recession erased more than half the jobs single mothers in California had gained from 1992 to 2002. The result has been a drop in the share of unmarried mothers in jobs, from 69.2% in 2007 to 58.8% in 2010. Unmarried mothers who still have jobs are working fewer hours per week than before.

In California, as elsewhere in the country, blacks continue to be hard hit. Their unemployment rate in the state reached 20% in March, up 5% from the year before. That's more than double their rate before the downturn. Some of this is because of the comparatively low education levels of many black Californians and their weak connections to the labor market. Some is due to employer discrimination. Blacks were among the last hired before the recession and therefore among the first to be let go in the downturn. That means they'll be among the last hired as the economy recovers

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-reich-unemployment-20110603,0,1851197.story

[MichiganVote]

1. K&R

[intheflow]

2. K&R, but "unmarried mothers"?

WTF is that meme, repeated over and over? How about "single mothers," which at least sounds like maybe they were married once or chose to have children outside of marriage. Unmarried mothers sounds like a bunch of promiscuous women popping out babies all day. :thumbsdown:

[intheflow]

3. kick

[Le Taz Hot]

4. They forgot anyone over 45.

If you're lucky enough to actually GET an interview, you walk in, the interviewer is 25, takes one look at you and you can read it in his/her eyes: "He's/She's too old." You're rejected even before you open your mouth. Interviewer must stretch out the interview to a whole 10 minutes before thanking you for your time.