Comments on: How chronic joblessness affects us all

By: natref

natref — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:44:14 +0000

There are many jobs out there and many qualified applicants. It is too bad that there are hiring managers that do say that candidates need to be currently employed. Many of the unemployed are through no fault of their own and are missing out on some good talent.

By: jkk1943

jkk1943 — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:26:31 +0000

Excellent article. I wish that Obama and his team of economists would take the time to read it and absorb its message. As a retired HR executive I can attest to the dangers of long term joblessness and how it acts as an impediment to being rehired. Unfortunately our practice of providing two to three years of unemployment compensation, while well intentioned, has the perverse effect of preventing some recipients from taking lower paying jobs or agressively mounting a job search until their benefits run out. My neighbor is a roofing contractor. He pays his roofers between $10-15 dollars per hour. When he advertises for an opening 90% of the applicants are Hispanics with questionable documentation. Our state has 11% unemployment and yet few Americans apply for these jobs. Could it be that we have turned our safety net into a “hammock” for the indolent?

By: Distressed

Distressed — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:04:37 +0000

If O would like to offer companies a tax incentive to hire unemployed — scale it to increasing incentive to hire a long term unemployed over a shorter term unemployed over 52 wks gets twice the incentive or 26 wks and over 100 wks gets twice that of a 52 wk unemployed term — this would get those long term unemployed off the ranks and into the work forces faster.

By: Robertla

Robertla — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:12:42 +0000

yea………but.

with all the productivity that technology has given us………not to mention all the offshoring of jobs……….it takes far less people to make all the products our marketplace needs.

given the fact that every person laid off loses purchasing power…….that makes the pool of customers smaller…….meaning we need even fewer employees.

how do you create customers?……..the workers in the developing world don’t make enough money to buy things in our marketplace.