I prefaced mybook with this paragraph:
“Three or four million heads of households don’t turn into tramps and cheats overnight, nor do they lose the habits and standards of a lifetime. They don’t drink any more than the rest of us, they don’t lie any more, and they’re no lazier than the rest of us. An eighth or a tenth of the earning population does not change its character which has been generations in themolding, or, if such a change actually occurs, we can scarcely charge it up to personal sin.” – Harry Hopkins, Federal relief administrator under Franklin D. Roosevelt – 1933
80 years later, nothing has changed. Those WITH jobs still think thateveryone WITHOUT jobs are either lazy winos or drug addicts, and are filthylow-life slackers who just wants to be on the government dole. But just like 80years ago, there is nothing farther from the truth.
Most people don't "prefer" to be poor if it means they don't haveto work. They would rather work, especially if it means they can earn a livingwage and can afford to save or buy stuff.
The Republicans and Tea Party fanatics are usually the offenders. They believethat those WITHOUT jobs are not looking for a job....even though these "lazyhobos" (many of whom have already worked 30 or 40 years) may have alreadyspent their life-savings, exhausted all their unemployment benefits, lost theirhomes, and lost their cars...but yet they STILL refuse to find a job!(Damn those lazy hobos!!!)
Private (not government) payrolls increased by only two million last year and over the last 3 years the economy has addedonly 5.8 million jobs (over 15 million Americans were unemployed in October 2009when the unemployed rate was reported to be at 10.2%)
So even with 5.8 million NET new jobs, according to some economists, thatstill leaves a four million shortfall in employment relative to its 2007 peak.(I say more than 4 million --- closer to 8.5 million. See my post: Where did 15 million jobless Americansgo?)
And the jobs gap, the number of jobs necessary to return to this peak and cover the growth in the labor force since then, is stuck arounda government-reported 11-12 million. The labor market is still far from fullrecovery.
And there will be additional cuts in government spending later this year(government payrolls). And many Republicans and people in the Tea Party todaywill be laid off, and they will apply for unemployment insurance benefits andfood stamps.
Recentlyinthe New York Times:
Are There Really No Good Job Applicants Out There? (by Catherine Rampell)
In December about 3 in 10 firms said they had trouble finding qualified workers. Despite the glut of workers, the share of smallbusinesses saying they couldn’t find the talent they wanted was generally rising from December 2009 until September 2012, when itreached its highest point since the recession began five years earlier.
What’s especially odd about these survey responses is that if employers are having trouble finding qualified workers, they should bebidding up wages to attract the few qualified workers who are out there. But that’s not what the data show.
One possible explanation for why a third of employers say they are having trouble finding qualified workers, despite the surplus ofunemployed people, is that so many workers on the job market are long-term unemployed at this point.
Employers are often loath to hire workers who have not been gainfully employed in a long time; some job ads even specify that workers must be currently orrecently employed to be considered for an open position. That may mean that the very same pool of workers looks increasinglyunattractive to companies as time marches on and those workers rack up more weeks of unemployment.
A corollary of all this is that relatively few new workers are joining the pool of unemployed — layoffs are near record lows — soemployers may have already considered and rejected all the existing applicants for their latest job openings.
Alsofrom the New York Times:
Why the Unemployment Rate Is So High (by Laura D’Andrea Tyson)
"Despite anecdotes about how employers cannot find workers with theskills they need, there is little evidence that the unemployment rate remainselevated because of mismatches between the skill requirements of available jobsand the skills of the unemployed.
When the recession hit in 2008, unemployment rates soared in every industry. As usual during recessions, mismatches between employer needs and worker skills also increased temporarily, reflecting greater churn in the labor market as workers were forced to move across industries and occupations.
But industrial and occupational mismatch measures are now back to their pre-recession levels, indicating that the overall unemployment rate is high because unemployment rates remain high across all industries and most skill groups, not because of a growing skills gap relative to the gap that existed before the recession.
...the number of workers who are grappling with long-term job loss isprobably far larger than the official number of long-term unemployed, as it doesnot include 1.1 million discouraged workers who want a job but are notcurrently looking for work, and many of the 1.7 million workers who havejoined disability* rolls because they cannot find a job.
* EDITOR'S NOTE: On Fox News Bill O'Reilly said in his TalkingPoints Memo that Social Security disability is a "con" and that"it's easy to put in a bogus disability claim." I also heard him ranton The Factor that "millions are leaving their jobs to go ondisability". But unless you were decapitated or are paralyzed from thewaist down, it's really not that easy at all...especially if your case goes to ahearing and you are unlucky enough to get a Republican or Tea Party judge (whowill also think you're a lazy slacker), because then you are SOL. Meanwhile, ittakes years to get approved, while all that time you might not have any incomeat all. Do millions of people really leave their jobs voluntarily and take the gamblethat maybe they might be eventually approved for a skimpy Social Securitydisability income?
Recentlyinthe Huffington Post:
Are the Long-Term Unemployed Winning Jobs Or Giving Up? (by Arthur Delaney)
The number of Americans unemployed for 99 weeks or longer has averaged just shy of 2 million for the past two years, but their ranksmay have begun to dwindle.
In December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted just 1.5 million "99ers," the smallest number in any month since 2010. Thefourth quarter of last year also saw the lowest average number of 99ers in two years.
But it's not clear that more of the very long-term unemployed are finding jobs. "That decline is likely not due to an improving labormarket, because it just hasn't improved much over the last two years," Heidi Shierholz of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institutesaid in an interview. "A lot of the decline in the unemployment rate we've seen is just due to people dropping out of the labor market."
Andthis is for Heidi Shierholz andLaura D’Andrea Tyson
We Did NOT Drop Out of the Labor Force! (by Yours Truly)
There is no government agency to report to when our unemployment benefits run out. We don't log in to our computers and say, "HereI am, I'm still looking for work!" No, instead we are swept under the rug and classified by the government as "discouraged workers" ---and that's why the labor "participation rate" is much lower now -- but yet, the unemployment rate still goes down.How can that be?
Full disclosure: Bud Meyers dropped out of high school 40 years ago, buthe worked full-time every year until 2008 when he was laid off from his job. Buthe didn't voluntarily "drop out" of the workforce, he was brutallyshoved out.
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