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The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

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Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#91

Post by zorpner »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #32
tptacek wrote: post #9

Two things. First, I wouldn't want to naysay the idea that unemployment is a vicious cycle, because it intuitively is. But: this analysis is based on resume callbacks. Something that I think is as true as the "damaged goods" stigma is that most Americans do not know how to market themselves during job searches. If your only access to the job market is through a mechanism that is designed to extract basic facts from a…

It's probably easier to justify a 6 month gap with "I decided to have a kid" than "I was unemployed because nobody wanted me".

Where on the resume would you recommend putting that information?

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#92

Post by michaelochurch »

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…

Here's a solution that doesn't require the government to hire long-term unemployed: lying on a resume or in an interview to conceal unemployment is now legal. (Well, technically, it was never illegal; just considered unethical.) You may:

* Expand dates of any job by up to two months or 10% on each side, whichever is larger.

* Bump an educational degree forward by up to 5 years if under 40, and 10 years if older.

* Move any employment engagement translationally by up to three years.

* Inflate title as long as it does not involve falsification of a professional credential (e.g. "Senior VP" is OK, "Physician" for a non-doctor is not).

Anyone who is fired for such now-legal falsification must be given six months' severance or there is a wrongful termination claim.

How does that sound to you?

(I don't think it's a good idea, but it is an improvement over the system that exists now.)

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#93

Post by VLM »

mgkimsal wrote: post #57

At some point the pendulum may swing the other way, and employers may not hire anyone who even has a current job, using "loyalty" as a filter. "If they're so bold as to take time off work to go interview here with me, why would I ever trust that they won't just lie for a day off and leave me high and dry in the future?" If we want to affect quick change for 'long term unemployed', start offering tax breaks to employe…

"why would I ever trust that they won't just lie for a day off"

That's just bizarre. I've been around a couple decades and I've always taken a personal or vacation day for interviews. I guess there are people who call in sick although thats not my style. I've never even heard of an employer so controlling that they get to decide if my day off activities are "worthy enough". Salaried jobs I just took off for an odd lunch hour.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#94

Post by icelancer »

rayiner wrote: post #35
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…

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…

>They jump to the conclusion: "well if nobody else wants him, why should I?"

Having been in charge of hiring, this is way, way more true than it is false. It is not irrational at all.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#95

Post by afterburner »

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…

Long term unemployment is intrinsically destructive, both to the individuals losing careers and money and to the economy as a whole. While understanding why it's happening is important, it's also important to compensate for it, for the good of society (and the economy) as a whole. Government is one of the few agencies that at least theoretically has the care of society as one of its goals; private corporations aren't going to give a sh*t, they're not going to "take one for the team" and hire less experienced people, even if the long term effect is increased consumer spending.

It is after all why things like welfare exist. So peoples' lives aren't ruined, and the secondary effects of that happening on a wide scale.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#96

Post by batonka »

tbrownaw wrote: post #6

So, being unemployed is being taken as a proxy for being incompetent/unemployable. I'd think getting fired after 6 months or less would be a much better indicator (even if you just look for once, rather than repeatedly to control for having gotten a crap boss)... is this just a case of HR departments being overconfident of their own collective skills?

Joel Spolsky said it best here:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html

To quote:

"When you fill an opening, think about what happens to the 99 people you turn away. They don't give up and go into plumbing. They apply for another job. There's a floating population of applicants in your industry that apply for nearly every opening posted online, even though many of them are qualified for virtually none of these positions. "

The article's author is assuming that the people in the under 6 months and over 6 months are identical candidates just based on resumes. They are ignoring all of the "soft skills" that can get picked up in actual interviews.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#97

Post by larrys »

lreeves wrote: post #60
larrys wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is that most Americans do not know how to market themselves during job searches" Along the same lines I had an office a few years ago in an office park about 1 mile from a Walmart. In all the years I was there nobody ever knocked on our door looking for work or dropping off a resume. At the Walmart though I'm almost certain that they had a steady stream of job seekers showing up and filling out employment forms. I'v…

Your anecdote doesn't really seem feasible for most people. Do you think it's reasonable that someone who has been out of work for 6 months would take on the risk and cost of flying to a tradeshow?

A few things.

First, people who read hacker news are not "most people".

But more importantly "most people" live hand to mouth or have living arrangements that are on the fringe of what they can afford or are only a short time period away from hot having enough money to pay the mortgage.

The idea is to live your life in a way that you have the money to do something like this if you need to do it.

Almost impossible to say of course without knowing the specific person or not whether they should gamble the $1000 (arbitrary) that it might take to take this chance.

Note I also said that I had pre arranged a few interviews and contacts before making the trip.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#98

Post by mgkimsal »

sukuriant wrote: post #67
marknutter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

Yeah, we talk about "means testing" social security payments in this country, but little talk of "means testing" welfare recipients.

I worked with people 20 years ago (at a burger king) who would turn down shifts because that extra $15 for a 5 hour shift would put them over a limit and they'd lose all their food stamp money. We're very keen on progressive taxation, but apparently progressive welfare is too far out of our realm of possibilities.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#99

Post by bryanlarsen »

enraged_camel wrote: post #25
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…

>>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…

Finding work should be your primary focus, yes. But employment counsellors will tell you that you cannot and should spend 8 hours a day doing it. That's just a recipe for burn out. After you've applied for a few thousand jobs and been rejected a few thousand times, applying for more jobs is an exercise in futility and a recipe for depression. You're obviously doing something wrong. Figure out what you're doing wrong, fix it, and then try again.
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