Long-Term Unemployment a ‘National Crisis’
January 18th, 2012
Wall Street Journal 1/18/12 – Sara Murray; Cameron McWhirter
While the job market is improving, long-term unemployment continues to be particularly pronounced, and there is little indication that it is falling quickly. The government reported in December that 3.9 million nationwide had been out of work for at least a year and were still looking.
Some will eventually find jobs, though long spells of unemployment are likely to scar them for years. Workers who were jobless for six months or more in the late 1990s and early 2000s in Connecticut and eventually found work earned 60% less than those who were unemployed for three months or less, according to economists Kenneth Couch of the University of Connecticut and Dana Placzek of the state labor department. Workers who had been unemployed for less than five weeks in 2010 had a 34% chance of finding a job the following month, according to U.S. Department of Labor data, while those out more than six months had only a 10% chance.
The article examines the impact of these developments on the town of Roswell, GA. Applications and placements at staffing firm Hire Dynamics LLC, which has six Georgia locations including one near Roswell, were up 40% last year, says chief executive Dan Campbell.
To read the entire article, click here.
January 18th, 2012 at 9:14 pm
So many long-term unemployed now have the dreaded gap between jobs on their resume. And with each passing month, the odds of finding employment gets slimmer.
So how can the long-term unemployed keep their resume from being immediately discarded when a recruiter sees a long gap between jobs?
And of course, many unemployed people are looking to get back to work even if it means starting over or taking a position that was lower than our previous jobs. How do we get past the stigma of being over-qualified?