The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment • Hacker News Board

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#61

Post by tptacek » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:36 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #54

tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they do. They're not even just the largest employer bracket; they literally employ a majority of the employed in America.

Hm... http://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship.htm Firms with 250+ employees have been slightly >50% since 1996. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewfs.nr0.htm 37.4% of employees are at firms of 1000+, 6.8% are 500-999, 7.2% are 250-499. So either the numbers I remembered were a bit outdated, or were using a higher cutoff than 250 (probably 500, since I remember it being not that much less than 50% wor…

I'm looking at "Statistics about Business Size", and considering as "large businesses" those firms with 500+ employees, as that's the largest top-level bracket they track. Within the 500+ bracket, firms with 5000+ employees are (for whatever it's worth) the largest component by far.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#62

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #52

marknutter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if they act irrationally they will be sufficiently punished by the market (no childish fantasy required). There aren't enough jobs? Then create more jobs. Starting a company, at my last check, is incredibly simple to do. Of course, turning a profit is hard, which is why people turn to the government to provide them with work rather than take the risk of starting a company. The government doesn't need to turn a p…

The market doesn't punish the companies for irrational behavior when everyone engages in the same irrational behavior.

Why don't you engage in rational behavior and get rich?

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#63

Post by evandena » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:38 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #23

bryanlarsen wrote: post #12

I've been on both sides of this divide. I've interviewed people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months, and I've been without formal employment for longer than 6 months. If all you've done is watch TV and send out resumes, nobody's going to hire you. You have to be able to say that you've done something. The easy answer is to go back to school. That costs money -- hopefully there's a government program you c…

I can absolutely vouch for this. After a 6 month contract gig, the employer told me they were going to bring me on full-time. I stopped interviewing thinking I had a full-time spot. They told me two weeks before the end of the contract they didn't have anything else for me and I was cut at the beginning of January after our project ended. I did find a job with a small company, but after three days, realized they were…

What if you simply got a business name for yourself? A DBA license isn't too hard to get, and would probably look a little more professional (even if unjust) than freelance.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#64

Post by arscan » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:38 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #46

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

"It's time for the government to start hiring the long-term unemployed." What the fuck? If you measure something you do not like, the immediate response should not be to grab a hammer and try to kill it. It probably exists for a reason. Understand the reason. Then take action. It may be that there is nothing you can do -- directly. Only a small few percentage points of the problems in the world go away through direct…

Honestly, some real skills do disappear with long-term unemployment, like getting up on time every day. Even working a made-up job is probably better. But real job skills do disappear, too. If one person has been working with machine tools 40 hours a week while the other hasn't used machine tools for six months, hiring the first is the rational thing to do. Personally, as a software engineer, I've enjoyed my bouts of…

> If one person has been working with machine tools 40 hours a week while the other hasn't used machine tools for six months, hiring the first is the rational thing to do

yes, but the point is that companies would even prefer hiring people that have been doing work in a different industry recently than someone who is 6 months unemployed but with experience in the same industry.

I think it simply comes down to employers automatically assuming that you have some sort of major flaw if you've been unemployed for so long.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#65

Post by tptacek » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #59

tptacek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find, if you talk to a lot of women who have looked for jobs after taking 6+ months off to deal with having a kid, that this is not true.

I'm in the UK so maybe things are somewhat different here with regards maternity but all women I have worked with who have taken time off for this have been given their job straight back once they are ready to return and are usually paid some % of their salary while they were off (I think the law mandates this).

I think that's a positive attribute of the UK system. But consider this: childbirth is a reason many women everywhere temporarily leave the workforce --- not for maternity leave, but literally surrendering their job, perhaps for a couple years. The research we're talking about today shows that after leaving the workforce for a couple years, they face an obstacle that makes it harder to find a new job, and thus more likely that they'll accept an inferior job.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#66

Post by randomdata » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #30

bryanlarsen wrote: post #12

I've been on both sides of this divide. I've interviewed people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months, and I've been without formal employment for longer than 6 months. If all you've done is watch TV and send out resumes, nobody's going to hire you. You have to be able to say that you've done something. The easy answer is to go back to school. That costs money -- hopefully there's a government program you c…

>If all you've done is watch TV and send out resumes, nobody's going to hire you. You have to be able to say that you've done something. WHY??!?!? Seriously, WHY?!?! So, I'm thinking that maybe there's some skew in these findings, and then you come in and say "Yea, I wouldn't hire you unless you show me you did more than just look for work". Looking for work is time consuming. Furthermore, as the spouse who's current…

Looking for work isn't an idle task, it is sales and marketing. If you do not record that fact for potential employers, questions are going to be raised. No money exchanging hands is not relevant, you were still working in a legitimate profession doing legitimate work. It is a job and should go on your resume. Likewise for home care, if that was your primary profession during that period of time.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#67

Post by sukuriant » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:40 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #50

enraged_camel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The other good answer is "I worked on X", where X could have been pretty much anything: a failed business, an open source project, volunteer work, or just making stuff to sell on Etsy. I didn't even care if it was remotely related to the position. I just wanted to see some initiative and passion. There's nothing wrong with a forced sabbatical as long as you do something with it. Ideally, yes. In reality, it's easie…

Well, you not saving money is nobody's fault but your own. And if you can't pay your bills, you can either take advantage of any of the many safety nets provided by the government, or you can use any of the natural safety nets that are available to everybody but the most antisocial people; friends and family. Jobs are not a right, they are a privilege.

There's an interesting amount of money you can make as a person living in the United States where you're not making enough money to both survive and save on your own; and, you're making too much money for the government to go out of its way to help you. I've had friends in those situations over the course of my life. I believe I've even heard of situations where people would turn down raises or even turn down jobs because making money at the new level earned them less money than the government help they were getting, and the government would stop giving them any help if they passed a certain threshold.

Maybe in your situations you've been lucky; but I've seen people on really hard times that cannot readily save. I'm grateful to know they're living stably now (as far as I know, little-to-know savings).

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#68

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:41 PM UTC

What bothers me most about the long term unemployed is the lack of visibility into what they have been doing during the down time. I recently got to look at two resumes, both people who had been unemployed for > 6 months, one guy has this big blank spot, the other has a narrative about what he's been doing. The active guy got in shape, he rebuilt is basement drainage system, he did odd jobs helping people with "handy" work (he was a highly paid system administrator at a New York bank before he was laid off) and he's been reading.

I am much less likely to call back the blank spot guy and much more likely to call back the active guy. What I'd like to know is, there any correlation between callbacks and intra-employment activity?

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#69

Post by jmsduran » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:41 PM UTC

The negative stigma that is placed on long-term unemployment is an issue that needs to be addressed; measuring how long someone has been unemployed is not really indicative of anything.

The rationalization that "If no one has hired them in X months, there must be a reason not to" is just flat out dumb. And while it may be a red flag when purchasing physical goods or real estate, it's a baseless stat when it comes to measuring how well an individual's expertise & qualities may be suited for a particular position.

In my opinion, there are much better stats an employer can take off a job application, and wouldn't mind the federal/state government passing legislation against this type of discrimination if it gets out of control.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#70

Post by michaelochurch » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #41

rayiner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, there is something to what he's saying. The idea that the labor market behaves rationally is a childish fantasy. Employers are not rational. They do all sorts of irrational things, and discriminating against the long-term unemployed (and also women returning to the work force from motherhood) is one of those irrational things. It's almost a dating mentality. They jump to the conclusion: "well if nobody else wants…

Well if they act irrationally they will be sufficiently punished by the market (no childish fantasy required). There aren't enough jobs? Then create more jobs. Starting a company, at my last check, is incredibly simple to do. Of course, turning a profit is hard, which is why people turn to the government to provide them with work rather than take the risk of starting a company. The government doesn't need to turn a p…

Well if they act irrationally they will be sufficiently punished by the market (no childish fantasy required).

The market does punish shitty corporations, but it happens over years to decades, and most people can't wait that long. How much comfort is it to someone who's unemployed if Microsoft breaks off and falls into the ocean in 2025? These people want jobs now and, as far as I can tell, don't really care what the market does to the companies that won't hire them.

Also, companies are mediocre (refusing to hire unemployed people is moral mediocrity, since no effort is spent finding out why he was long-term unemployed) because most people are morally mediocre. So, while good companies eventually come up and replace bad companies, they're also getting worse as time goes on.

Most of the people these articles are written about don't live in SF or NYC where there are a large number of good companies, so the option of not working for mediocre companies reliant on social-proof bullshit might not be one they have.

My personal thought: long-term unemployed should lie. Yes, I'm under my real name, and I'm still saying that. I don't care. I feel like anyone (even an employer) who relies that much on social proof deserves to be deceived. I've never lied on a resume, but I have no issues with people who lie as pertains to this particular matter. If you've been out for 10 months, make something up.