While considerable attention has been paid to the larger issue of unemployment, the issue of long-term joblessness has gone—when considering the sheer difference in terms of quantity between articles on joblessness and those devoted solely to the problem of long-term joblessness—comparatively untouched. Nevertheless, even those articles that canvass the overall health of the American economy do occasionally mention the problem of long-term joblessness, discussing the stigma attached to those afflicted and the assumptions made by recruiters regarding the reason why this category of job seeker has, despite his or her best efforts, gone without employment.
This problem of long-term joblessness, in terms of its reach, is not only pervasive but unprecedented, says Gary Burtless, Chair in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Burtless, responding to a prompt put forward by John Maggs of the well-respected publication National Journal, observes, “Longtime job seekers now represent 46% of the unemployed…To put this number in perspective, in previous recessions the peak fraction of unemployed who have been unemployed longer than 6 months is rarely more than one-quarter of the unemployed.” At its peak during the post-war period, recognizes Burtless, this number constituted only 26% of the total unemployed. And while some more optimistic spectators, such as recruiting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas CEO John Challenger, claim “it could be several months or even years before unemployed returns to pre-recession levels,” most seem to concur with Challenger’s latter prediction: that the number of unemployed will remain above pre-recession levels for years to come.
More specifically, Camille Busette, Vice President of the Earned Assets Resource Network (EARN)—a non-profit focused on breaking the cycle of poverty, responding to the same prompt asserts that “in order to replace the number of jobs lost during this recession, the U.S. would have to generate about 400,000 jobs a month for three years.” However, Busette acknowledges that most predictions seem to agree that the U.S. unemployment rate will “normalize” around or “by 2015” and will “remain close to 6%,” noting that this fact does not “augur well for the long-term unemployed.” Yet, as Burtless claims, what is striking is that in terms of the unemployment exit rate, the long-term unemployed and short-term unemployed seem to experience a shared fate.
A recent Brookings Institution report, which Burtless cites, indicates that despite the presence of job opportunities, evidence seems “to suggest that elevated rates of joblessness are [not] a symptom of diminished employment opportunities of the long-term unemployed” and that “[t]he record rise in long-term unemployment associated with the recession is likely to yield a persistent overhang of workers facing long unemployment spells, slowing the recovery.” The silver lining, however, lies in the fact that “the long-term unemployed in the United States flow out of unemployment at a rate that is four times higher than the aggregate outflow rates in Continental Europe” in the 1980s. Nonetheless, the report emphasizes the historic nature of the jobless situation with which the U.S. is faced. And despite gains made by the economy, besides time and prolonged seasons of positive growth, there seems to be no one silver bullet which can easily remedy the issues faced by America’s long-term unemployed. Though things might seem grim, as I will be discussing in a post later this week, there exist concrete steps America’s long-term employed can take to become more competitive job seekers!
Comments are closed.