The Atlantic: Alana Semuels: A Better Way to Help The Long-Term Unemployed

Source: The Atlantic Magazine– Employment applications

“LAS VEGAS—Long-term unemployment was a phrase you heard a lot about during the recession. Numerous studies showed that people who were out of work for long periods of time had a hard time finding a new job—and keeping it. And about one-third of those unemployed workers eventually gave up and stopped looking for work, studies suggested.

For all the recent good news about the booming job market and growing wages, there are still people out there desperately looking for work. Nearly 3 million of them—about one-third of all of the jobless—have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In past recessions, a far smaller share of the jobless had been out of work for so long.

But states grappling with tight budgets have lost their sympathy for the long-term unemployed as the economy turns a corner. In the last two years, seven states have reduced benefits to 20 weeks or fewer—26 weeks of unemployment benefits used to be standard. The share of the unemployed receiving benefits now stands at 27 percent, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project, which is an all-time low.

Until recently, De Ann Jensen was struggling to cope with these changes. The 47-year-old Las Vegas resident lost her job as a construction administrator in January of 2014, and had been looking for work ever since. When her benefits ran out in July, she couldn’t make her mortgage payments anymore, and was forced to sell her home in a short sale and move in with her parents.”

Source:The Atlantic

There are people on public assistance who didn’t even finish high school and now are single parents generally mothers who have very little if any job experience even at low-skilled low-income jobs. Some of these people even have a drug problem either with alcohol or illegal drugs. This is probably the hardest population to help people on Welfare. The only harder population as far as moving people off of Welfare to the workforce with a good job would be people who are disabled and even learning disabled to go along with all their other issues.

But then we have a population of unemployed workers who have been much better with their lives and have lived responsibly for most of their adult lives. Finished high school while they were in high school and even have a college or vocational degree or at least a community college degree. But have been laid off during bad turn in the economy and are not old yet and even not even fifty yet, but lets say are in their forties and have positive work experience that goes back twenty-years or more in a field that they were trained for. But now can’t find another job in that field. Those employers are going for younger cheaper employees, or those jobs simply no longer exist.

The educated unemployed are the easiest people to help and move off unemployment. Because they are responsible adults who are nowhere near retirement who want to work because they have responsibilities to meet and they actually like working. And simply need a good job to make that happen for them. For people who fit this group of unemployment they should be back in school. Government should help them with the finances for them to go back to school. And either get more skills in their current field. Or learn another trade and work there. This would be major and great investment in human capital that would eventually pay for itself.

It is not everyday, every week, every month or even every year that I agree with Newt Gingrich on anything. But he made this point when he ran for president back in 2011-12 that the amount of time that people who are long-term unemployed who were laid off spend not finding another job, they could be using that time to further their education. That you could extend their Unemployment Insurance, but in it would be a requirement that they further their education. Either at work seminar or a community college and they would have a much better opportunity of finding a good job. Which is something we should’ve been doing as a country ever since the Great Recession hit back in 2008.
The Real News: ‘High Unemployment Due To Lack of Demand, Not Skills or Education’