Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression

[tpsbmam]

<snip>

CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports that the chronically unemployed face the hardest road back to recovery, and that while the jobs picture may be improving statistically on a national level, it is not for them.

<snip>

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.

The bigger the gap on someone's resume, the more questions employers have.

<snip>

Here's another problem: more than 1 million of the long-term unemployed have run out of unemployment benefits, leaving them without the money to get new training, buy new clothes, or even get to job interviews.

More at CBS.

How horrifyingly sad.

[Drale]

1. Except there are safety nets now, no matter how hard the repukes try to kill them

During the Great Depression, there where hundreds of thousands of men wandering the country looking for work.

[Kolesar]

3. And America moved the young men to camps in the countryside so they didn't riot or steal

Stuff happens when there are pissed off and idle young people.

[notesdev]

5. no such thing

as a safety net large enough to carry everyone

Bankers took our safety net and wove of it their golden parachutes.

[Drale]

6. If there was no unemployment,

We would be in a much much worst situation than we already are.

[tpsbmam]

8. Tell that to these Alexandra and the thousands like her:

From a 2010 NY TImes article on 99ers: 99 Weeks Later, Jobless Have Only Desperation

<snip>

Facing eviction from her Tennessee apartment after several months of unpaid rent, Alexandra Jarrin packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door coupe recently and drove out of town.

Ms. Jarrin, 49, wound up at a motel here, putting down $260 she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set, enough for a weeklong stay. It was essentially all the money she had left after her unemployment benefits expired in March. Now she is facing a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long ago, had a corporate job near New York City and was enrolled in a graduate business school, whose sticker is still emblazoned on her back windshield.

She returned to VT, where she'd happily spent much of her adult life, because at least there was a health care safety net there. She's right -- you're fucked elsewhere.

<snip>

She contacted a local shelter but learned there was a waiting list. Welfare is not an option, because she does not have young children. She says none of her three adult sons are in a position to help her.

The safety nets you think are there aren't. Adults and children are ending up homeless when they've exhausted all of their resources. Yes, there are food stamps and SOME minute financial assistance for short periods of time, but any small financial assistance out there quickly runs out in this post-welfare reform US. I don't know where you think the safety nets are -- look at the growing numbers of homeless. Where's the safety net there?

[zazen]

2. "please provide prof refs from LAST THREE YEARS of employment"

Just saw it today in an ad for an admissions counselor at Duke.

It's code for, we don't want homemakers returning to the workforce. We don't want any long-term unemployed, including PhD's who couldn't find work.

[Vanje]

4. +++++++++++++++++++++++!!!! nt

Someone who gets it.

[mdmc]

7. lose your job lose your health insurance

access to affordable medical treatment gets harder..