Becoming Less Invisible
The long term unemployed are finally becoming less invisible. From the PBS The Nightly Business Report:
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The official figures will tell you there are 1,371,000 people like Randy Moe.
RANDY MOE, 99ER CHICAGO: I was unemployed, laid off, August 15, 2008, and collected benefits until about six weeks ago.
GERSH: That’s because Moe hit the limit on benefits. In most states, that’s 99 weeks, which is why many of those who have run out call themselves “99ers.”
MOE: We’ve become thrown away people. They’re losing a lot of valuable people, the country is.
GERSH: Randy Moe found other 99ers online. A dozen meet regularly in this chat room. They talk about finding a job and about lobbying Congress for help. They’re part of a grassroots movement to add what’s called a tier five to unemployment insurance — another 20 weeks of benefits.
Websites for the unemployed are cropping up:
Survive Unemployment News Blog
Unemploymentality has a lot of links to other unemployed bloggers, some helpful options (look for Broke-Ass Stuart’s money saving recommendations) and there’s also plenty of entertainment.
The only way to end long term unemployment is to put a human face on it.
Tags: long-term unemployment, unemployment
I’m an expired 99er also. While I would not turn down a Tier 5 extension, more unemployment isn’t the answer.
We need jobs! If private industry is not creating jobs and government refuses to step in with temp jobs and OJT type jobs, then I propose that government make zero interest loans available to the unemployed so that we can buy businesses for sale or buy into a franchise.
Most unemployed do not have the resources to buy or start their own business. The government could use the SBA to administer such loans. This is the ONLY solution I can see.
Let’s work together to get some legs under this idea!
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What I am personally seeing is the employers using this job situation to discriminate.
Overqualified, underqualified, unemployed, age, all have become reasons to NOT hire a perfectly capable person who meets the job requirements they post.
I had one HR person tell me “They would not hire someone overqualified because they will only leave when things get better.”
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