For Many, Layoffs Are Their New Permanent Lifestyle
By Susie Madrak Saturday Jun 06, 2009 10:00am
Despite what you might be reading about signs of hope, there's no rational basis for believing the unemployment crisis is ending anytime soon. I understand that they're trying to find something positive to say, but many of us prefer to know the truth - like this:
For those receiving unemployment benefits, long-term joblessness has tested the limits of the system. In April, 47.1 percent of all people collecting state unemployment insurance exhausted the usual maximum of 26 weeks of benefits without finding work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the highest rate on record, going back to 1972, when the Labor Department began keeping track.
The $787 billion stimulus package that Congress passed in February contained $27.1 billion to help states extend unemployment benefits. As of mid-May, 2.5 million people were collecting extended benefits. The time limit has been increased to 59 to 79 weeks.
Workers who exhaust their benefits and don't get new training tend to become disconnected from the labor force, said Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz. "A lot of them have ended up on disability rolls," he said. "They're basically never coming back into the workforce."
Extending unemployment benefits and making it easier for the jobless to be retrained could help workers avoid some of the most negative consequences of job loss. But under state regulations, the unemployed often have to give up benefits if they return to school. President Obama earlier this month said he will try to persuade states to allow unemployed workers to keep their benefits as they seek a broader range of schooling.
Until then, Mark Beaupre, 49, of Providence, R.I., is wondering whether he and his family will be able to rejoin the middle class. He lost his $8-an-hour job at a ringmaking factory more than a year ago. It was the last in a string of manufacturing jobs he's held since the 1980s. His wife, Cathy, was let go from her customer service job a year ago. The couple used to earn about $50,000 a year. Now they have fallen behind on their mortgage and applied for food assistance.
"Three cars. College money. We went from that to poverty," Beaupre said. "I never thought I'd be in this sort of situation."
Beaupre has applied for scores of jobs, keeping him out of the pool of "marginally attached workers" who have given up looking and are no longer counted as unemployed by the government's primary measure of joblessness.
But the odds of finding a job have steadily gotten worse. In December 2007, there were about two unemployed workers for every opening, Labor Department data show. As of March, there were five for every opening. Beaupre found that out when he tried to go to a job fair in Providence two weeks ago. Three thousand people turned out.
"I couldn't even get into the parking lot," he said.
Recently, the sight of other middle-class refugees living in a tent city in town unnerved him, reminding him of how quickly his life has changed.
"We were doing okay," he said. "It's shocking. I don't know what to say. We are walking around in dazes."
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and sacrifice some SS benefits because of the declining economy.
No Lebensborn program for you, mein herr!
The future will be one of a declining middle class. Until finally at the end of the age of fossil fuel there will be only two classes.
The 21st century for human beings will begin to resemble the 6th century Europe with a distressing difference. The Earth and its ecosystems will be damaged.
We've been reclining for years.
"x"
if he wants to advertise that as "the best thing" I will resist the lure.
Sometime in the middle half of 2010 the Obama/Geittner/Summers propaganda that "the recession is over" will be revealed for what it always was and always has been: a lie foisted on the public "for our own good." When this occurs the American public will lose whatever trust and confidence they once had in their government, as well as its leaders, elected and appointed.
What was known as simply a "recession" will be revealed as a massive full blown Depression once the so-called stimulus "cure" runs its course and the Bear market rally crumbles and crashes to Earth beginning in October 2009. As 2010 grinds slowly on and on, the process "when belief in the system fades" will reach even more of the country's population, then the conclusion: "we've been lied to" will finally take hold.
Naturally, "Obama & Company" will claim that "this is finally the bottom of the real estate collaspe" and then more borrow-and-spend stimulus packages will begin in 2011. Of course that too will fail for the fundamental reason the first stimulus failed: inflating debt cannot cure over-indebtedness and financial trickery cannot fix financial fraud.
In the first quarter of 2012 the American public will finally "come out of the ether" and get an unvarnished look at the REAL World currently masked by governmental lies, deception and massive injections of propaganda. It won't be pretty, nor will it be the fantasyland being currently promised - "return to 2006 bubble economy". Instead what the American people will be faced with is a full-blown financial and social meltdown. However this time, unlike the Great Depression of the 1930's, this Depression will be so severe and brutal most will question whether the country as they once knew it will even survive at all. Any hope of a better future for the American people's children will quickly evaporate and no longer exist...
.
Its about time we got the opinion of an optimist around here.
with comments like this:
"Workers who exhaust their benefits and don't get new training tend to become disconnected from the labor force, said Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz."
Obama has proposed a massive overhaul to the entire UI system .. that allows people collecting unemployment benefits, to attend college.
he's having a tough time getting state agencies to cooperate.
when environmental laws and economic downturns cause decades-old independent logging companies to lay off all their loggers, and entire logging-based communities start crumbling .. it kind of makes sense that, maybe those loggers should go to college and learn some nursing, or green technologies.
but if you do this, you risk losing your benefits. because if you're attending school, it risks a scheduling conflict .. how can you be actively seeking work or capable of accepting work, if you're in class?
so these kinds of comments really annoy me. its like they deliberately ignore basic concepts of how UI works. how do these people become "experts" anyway? how can an "expert" on unemployment analysis, legitimately discuss, with a straight face, the fact that people out of work aren't seeking to upgrade their marketability ... because they're "discouraged" .. you know?
I just found a job again, recently. after nearly 6 months off, ugh. I would have LOVED to signed up for a couple of SQL classes to beef up my skills, or maybe Oracle to expand my marketability. but I would have risked losing 50% of my UI checks. and considering that UI checks are already 40% less than my original checks .. thats like, what, 70% decrease in income?
its got nothing to do with being "discouraged" .. workers - "don't get new training" - because they can do basic math.
"Journalists who exhaust their sources and don't get new ones tend to quote professors disconnected from the labor force"
that made me smile.
ya .. ya, my other favorite thing is to watch "work search experts" on various news shows, urging workers to write a really great cover letter(because of course, hiring managers are reading cover letters en masse these days), and fine tune their resume (because, ya, of course, people are also reading resumes en masse these days as well) for each company they're applying for (because, you know, everybody knows exactly who they're applying for nowadays when they apply for jobs) .. then follow up a day or two later with a phone call to the hiring manager (because all the jobs posted nowadays list the name and direct dial of the hiring manager, along with a little note at the bottom of the job posting that says "CALLS GLADLY ACCEPTED AND STRONGLY ENCOURAGED!") .. amirite?
lol. seriously. these "experts" are seriously, seriously divorced from the way shit really works.
I applied for over 100 jobs when I was out of work. 2/3 of them .. I don't even know wtf I applied for. I saw a posting for a "Project Manager" or "Business Analyst" and the list of qualifications just discussed software skills. A lot of times I had no idea if I was applying for Nike, or IBM, or Freightliner, or Blue Cross, or .. - I applied through some clever web tool with drop down menus to document my skillset, like the resume was just an after thought.. - and nearly 100% of the jobs said "NO CALLS" at the bottom.
I had that same problem when I was applying for Paralegal work: I had no idea what firm was hiring, there was no name to contact, no address, nothing but the method of contact, either fax or online, and then hear nothing.
And if you go in person to apply they refer you to their website.
see, here's one example.
http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/sof/120747...
"Database Administrator" .. lol, thats it. for who? what kind of *CONTENT* is in the data??! is it for a cell phone services/network provider, is it for a newspaper, is it for a trucking company, is it for a non-profit??
how do I fine tune my resume for that? how do I write a focused cover letter for that?
***
these "experts" need an intellectual overhaul. you can't "go back to school" when you're out of work, and you can't "target your work search" .. not in this day and age, yo.
Education costs are rising exponentially due to cut-backs on government student loans, and good luck getting a bank loan to help.
Meanwhile what do you eat, your children?
mail it in. If you are the only resume typed on colored paper (red is attention getting), you will still not get the job.
A suggestion from an old article I read once.
From when the 1950s?
People should write their resumes in blood. That would be attention getting.
Look up in the sky...
It's Superkvetch!
been able to find one in months, you no longer count. Nice.
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06032009.html
the so-called party is over. the obama/fed.reserve/wallStreet's strategy for us to spend are way out of this may NOT work. some say probably won't work.
After two decades of sending every possible job to China, who can act surprised when people can't find jobs? What did you really think was going to happen?
Especially with much shortened planned obsolescence and circuit boards.
It's cheaper to replace than to repair, hence, no repair jobs either.
who could have foreseen that happening?
Layoffs, layover, and a wife who won't laid.
Whatever happened to negative income taxes?
Big media does a bang-up job of reporting on the economy. They always emphasize the "Wall Street Economy" and minimize the state of the real economy. The 2 parties gave political permission for jobs to go to a communist country (after so many Americans died fighting communism) and now there's nothing here. How can it ever improve?
There expecting a second round of home foreclosures, I think due to middle-class people who borrowed against their homes for kids college, a little liquidity etc.
What communist country is that, pray tell.
China is an authoritarian capitalist society with no social safety nets at all.
They stopped being communist in outlook when Deng Xiaoping said it is good to be rich.
In 1992 he officially adopted a market economy.
As far as Americans dying to fight communism. That was all Military Industrial propaganda.
The deaths were real enough, the reason for the deaths was the sham.
It is same story today with Islam.
The Oligarchs want their war profits and their empire, they opposed anyone, anywhere with the slightest sense of social concern.
We the peons provided the corpses.
Hummers. Next thing they will bring back Corvairs, right?
The Corvair is only remembered by you, and I when you remind me.
As I recall, it got reasonably good gas mileage for that era. The main problem was if you had an accident at more than 5 miles per hour, YOU WERE DEAD.
The Hummer deal is not done. At ten miles per gallon it is a danger to life on earth.
The age of petroleum will be over and no one will remember the Corvair but you.
There will probably not be an internet for you to remind me.
The thing is capitalism is neither Communist nor Democratic, yet there are those who would in effect argue that the Constitution guaranteed a capitalist system.
Capitalism is about maximizing the return on the self's capital, ie the individual's money.
It is certainly NOT communal. It is NOT democratic (small 'd').
It is not social.
The Constitution leans, in my view, towards the social.
Though, it does forbid the states interfering with the obligation of contracts.
Your last point was a limitation on state rights, but on federal too?
That was also a common law precendent. If contracts aren't reasonbly safe, no one would enter into them. Although businesses do break them quite a bit if they can get a better deal somewhere else. However, if they do that practice too often, people won't enter into contracts with them.
I think in a sense that's why there was wide-spread suspicion of business even before the republicans wrecked our system. Business people have been cheating the workers for years of rights and benefits they signed off on on the hiring contract. Chapter 11 and chapter 7 bankruptcies are ways of throwing out these obligations, and the airlines in particular have been throwing out pension obligations.
between the states with respect to each others laws. A legally recognized common law marriage in one state should be recognized in all states. Does that happen? Not always. Not at all with respect to gay marriage, but as this concept and law is fairly new, I guess we'll have to see how it falls out. And all the noise about gay marriage and abortion is just the corporationists paying lip service and thus buying votes from the Christian far right. They are being used, and they are too intellectually lazy to realize it. Or too afraid of their god to question it. Run to confession and church. You had an original thought! Run for the life of your soul!!!!
Bartering is good.
your correct but "they" want us to borrow NOT barter our way to the middleclass.
to them? If they care nothing for us, and they don't, and care only for our money, and they do, then if we keep our money, what do they have? Many products and service providers just sitting around collecting dust. They must pay taxes here on the money they make selling their products here, regardless of where their products are manufactured. Especially if the products are imported, and especially if they are imported from China. China is flourishing, because we are paying for it. China is loaning us our own money back. They say they are loaning us the money to finance the war in Iraq, and expect to be payed back. They threatened the Bush admin. that if their filthy products were inspected any more then they are now (less than 1%) they would have to seriously consider calling in the "loans" they made to us. What kind of Bizzaro world has this become? Huh? Enough. Fight back. Do not buy anything not made in the USA. Don't charge anything. If you cannot pay cash, go without it. It's not as hard as you think. Libraries are free. Did you know that almost all vitamins and prescription drugs are made in China in filthy facilities. You think the peanut problem from Georgia was bad? Do some research. Your will be sickened, mentally and physically. Much sea food comes from China and is cultivated in polluted water. Do not EVER eat bay scallops. You do not want to know what the water is polluted with. Okay. I'll tell you. Anti-freeze, feces, should I go on? Nah. Check it out for yourself. I am not exaggerating the least little bit. And since when did we ever care what "they"want. Doing that would be a main reason why we got into this mess. As I always say, if you want something from someone, you give them power over you.
"They always emphasize the "Wall Street Economy" and minimize the state of the real economy."
Just stare blindly at the Dow. As long as it goes up all is well, even if the only reason it's going up is because the dollar is falling. Never mind that unemployment and underemployment are up, wages are down, and the cost of things you need to buy to survive are going up.
If you want to know what's going on in the country, the corporate media is a bad place to start.
the so-called party is over. the obama/fed.reserve/wallStreet's strategy for us to spend are way out of this may NOT work. some say probably won't work.
----------------------------
The math says it won't work.
100% of booms go bust.
100% of bubbles burst and deflate.
The Day of reckoning always arrives.
Buying the long bond, the FED has monetized debt. The consequence of that has been for the 10 year treasury yield to tank, the day it was announced, then to start rising to a record spread with short term debt. Friday, the rate hit 3.8, which killed the refi market and hit new mortgages, pushing them toward 6%. At 6%, house prices need to drop further, for buyers to afford them.
In addition, Quantitative easing has caused speculation in commodities and driven oil to double from 35 to about 70 in the last several months. This puts a crimp in consumer spending.
The FED bought the long bond, to keep long rates low, to prop up home prices, but the market called Bernanke's bluff and pushed the rate higher to reflect inflation risk. Action and reaction. Bernanke can buy more long bonds and push the rate down again, but that may push more money into oil speculation, driving oil prices higher still. The monetizing has to go somewhere. At what point does the price of oil choke off the economy again?
consumers are facing record debt that many are trying to reduce/payoff. the public is now saving at the
same time they're being told their money will be worth less in the future(inflation). this i feel is a sales pitch to stimulate spending. the real concern may be deflation. gasoline prices have been on the rise.
they say this is due to the summer season but as we know as the dollar falls the commodities are the hedge. index fund buying is increasing oil prices. the crude tankers are full and anchored in the gulf. what gets me, is that the financial institutions are probably using funds from TARP/talf to buy oil futures.
Oil futures!?!?
They are buying the oil.
here
Then they predict a rise in price and they have the oil parked offshore.
The entire system is rigged by the Oligarchs.
We the peons are the cogs and the corpses.
well that's a newer strategy i wasn't aware of. usually they don't take/hold the actual crude they would sell prior to having to take possession. wow the refineries reduce production and financial firms buy low and sell high but at the same time they want us to drive and spend.
increase in oil prices. Can't blame the Arabs this time. Why is it that the increase in food prices was blamed on the high cost of transportation last year when gas was $4 plus a gallon. Now that the price of gas has come down, even with the speculators active, the price of food has remained unnaturally high? Because no one complains. The only thing I have seen decrease in price at the market is King Arthur flour, a company owned and operated by its employees, located in Vermont. Bread here is almost $5 a loaf. Ridiculous. Corporate food-bad for you. Buy as locally as you can, and eat seasonally. For an eye-opening experience, research Monsanto.
I think that's suspicious too.
However, the explanation they give is that because no one can afford to go out to eat, they buy from the grocery store and eat at home, thus this new quantity demand for food is depleting the quantity supply, causing the costs to go up.
Corn is essential to a lot of products sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, and is also core in our food chain since it's fed to the animals we slaughter for meat.
And when farmers are planting so much more corn for ethanol at the expense of all other crops, that means the the quantity supply for corn dwindles, and the cost of produce goes up as well.
Oil - the next Wall Street bubble.
That chick in the insurance ad is going to get whiplash without even an auto accident.
...a lot of the jobs that were lost, were lost a year or more ago -- while Bush & Co. were watching the US economy tank.
And the irony of all the complaints I've seen on conservative blogs from out-of-work folks blaming President Obama for their joblessness is that they stupidly also mention that they've been, as one said, "a stay at home dad now, I've enjoyed being with my son for the past 2 years".
Duh. Do they think anyone reading that (who isn't a right-wing 'bot) can't figure out who was running the country (into the ground) when they lost their job?
What? Sure, blame it on presidential CANDIDATE Obama back in 2006. That makes a lot of sense.
it's a desperate move/strategy to shift BLAME from obama from the BUSH legacy. rising unemployment has been going on for many months. it's complex it did NOT start jan.21,2009 and it wasn't going to stop then either. BUSH and company turned their back on the economy/rising foreclosure problem. they wanted the market to figure it out. better yet they wanted to pass the hot potato to the democrats. with a financial crisis,automaker crisis,economic crisis,foreclosures and unemployment obama is bound to have some short comings. the(r) know this and they remind us of those routinely. will we hear much about how this could have been worse? i doubt it. people can't think in those terms very easily. these problems are much bigger than obama. this has been brewing for years. this is the big push to get economic globilization where they want it. trying to put this obama and make it recent political phenomenon is ridiculous and desperate.
when the stimulus package was being created...he shouldve put his foot down
what was needed was wpa.2....not a bunch of programs that may take years to go into effect
Sounds like a lazy loser who is supported by a wife who will eventually smarten up and leave him to grovel for SSDI because he uses heroin. Or crack. If you could not find a job in the past two years, you are not trying. Placate yourself with the wimpy "house husband" label, but we know what you really are.
They must have been interviewing my idiot brother-in-law. He lost two jobs under Bush, but its Obama's fault. You can't make this shit up!
let's see...the Blue Dogs and Insurance Company Whores think we should just all be forced to buy health insurance. Last time I looked, people were paying $1200 a month or more for their COBRA (isn't that a snake that spits in yer eye?) so how in fuck do these asshats think we're gonna pay for mandatory health insurance? I've been living on about $1000 a month for ten years and the only reason I'm not dead is that I'm a vet and the VA took pity on me and took care of my non-service connected illnesses over the years. (They took good care of me, too!) I really can't see how all of the "fringers" like me who can't get a "real" job and exist with weird combinations of handyman, part-time and day-labor work are going to ever have reasonable health care. Screw these insurance bastards with their 20-25 percent slice off the top of everyones' health care dollar!
with this unemployment continuing people will lose/can't pay for their healthCare insurance. so the cost will shift to the paying pool essentially a hidden tax. more unemployed more hidden tax. healthCare reform is a economic necessity. CHINA understands this for their economy as they are going to a
universal healthCare system. NOT only do they manipulate their currency to compete NOW they will offer
universal healthCare which will not only stimulate citizen spending but may it difficult to compete against them.
The 2 parties gave political permission for jobs to go to a communist country (after so many Americans died fighting communism) and now there's nothing here. How can it ever improve?
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It is more than just the two political parties permitting jobs to go to China. 1.3 billion people could not be kept out of the world economy forever. When China opened their doors, they sucked jobs into their jobless vacuum. Yes, companies closed down factories and moved them to China, but China could have built their own factories and competed with American companies and people would have bought the cheaper Chinese goods.
Every inflation ends in a deflation. It is a cycle and that is what people are ignoring. There is no up without down. The tide ebbs and flows. China left the world economy, then re-entered it. The 800 pound gorilla in the room casts a big shadow.
the problem i have with the economic/financial crisis is the lack of proactive actions if you will to reduce
slow this down earlier. i guess it was the "perfect storm" for some. i believe the collateral damage will be worst than it needs to be. i just don't believe the "free market" is perfect.....it's manipulated. therefore
regulation is needed. overall i would agree some of this deleveraging is the cycle. this culture in business
and life for that matter to take as much from others has gotten out of control. now the losers in the game
will be a huge number that everyone except for very few will be paying for.
Are you saying capitalists and irony go hand in hand?
Nothing is going to change, until we tax the rich, and take back all the money they stole from the rest of us!
You cannot have a healthy economy in a democratic society, when 2% of the people have more wealth than 55% of the people combined. Period! Not gonna happen. LOL with that one, considering how many teabagger morons exist out there.
x
You will be re-trained
You will be re-educated
You will be assimilated.....
resistance is futile.
ROFLMAO!
I'm not a believer in socialism, but the fact that CEOs who lose their jobs walk away with a good amount of money to live off of for years to come while, in their wake, people end up losing their jobs who were actually doing their jobs properly with no reasonable compensation for it, shows that if the "Free Market" were allowed to decide everything, things would be infinitely worse. The reason "Free Market" Capitalism (in quotes because when the rich are free to exploit the poor, it's only free for the haves - not the have nots), is the same reason Communism won't work - human greed and corruption.
The fact of the matter is that if there weren't laws to compel unemployment insurance by companies, they would consider it an unnecessary expense and then these people would be screwed. I'm not against people making money and I don't want to limit their ability to make money, but if what is happening now, in real time (it wasn't so in your face at the start of the Great Depression), does not kill the argument of letting the "free market" decide all things, I don't know what will. Regulation is a necessity to keep the greed and corruption in check.
Now, I'm not so naive to believe that the government is not greedy or corruptible as well (after all, if they weren't capable of those 2 things, communism WOULD work), but that's where we the people have the power to keep them in check. We don't because the news industry keeps so much crap in the water that most people don't really know for sure what's going on. Unlike those of us who check websites such as this daily, a lot of people feel that they are informed by reading their local newspaper and catching the evening news or the morning news. They get everything in soundbites which are now presented in a way to try to be "balanced" rather than actual journalists who are supposed to be cleaning the water up to find the actual truth.
Very well stated.
kind of digressing from the original point of the article, but in the immortal words of Noam Chomsky, we can't discuss these things intelligently unless we discuss these things honestly.
tackling the lack of good, quality jobs available in America is a complicated subject.
pretending that work search processes that worked in 1983 (mailing in bright resumes to a physical address and following up with a phone call 3 days later) still work today - is not honest. to pretend its a valuable suggestion just isn't intelligent. no offense to savannah43, of course. but there are a lot of experts on CNN, on FOX, on Good Morning America advocating this, and its just not intelligent.
pretending that people should expand their education when basic rules of UI eligibility prohibit education and training, is neither honest nor intelligent.
pretending that someone who's been out of work for 16 months wants to have a job, but someone who's been out of work for 23 months doesn't want to have a job, is neither honest nor intelligent.
***
I don't know who the right person is to confront these bourgeois "experts" in the media, but - just like Paul Krugman is intelligently debating the anti-universal-healthcare pundits, and the Rick Santellis ..
I just think we really need someone to stand up to the Lawrence Katz's of the world and tell them "dude, you're wrong. people who have been out of work for 23 months still desperately want to do something meaningful with their lives. people who work part time at the local 7-11 but used to be an Office Manager, also want to do something more meaningful with their lives. people are prohibited by the Employment Department from expanding their knowledge base. basic work search processes have changed dramatically in the last 7 years to a much more anonymous and impersonal process, and its virtually impossible to do quality competitive work searches without full-time internet access."
I don't know who that person is to make these statements. its not me of course, I'm not popular enough or cool enough. but someone needs to step up and confront the talking points.
Whoever help engineered this(soros,Geitner,Benanke,Bushetc) travesty may i say you're a complete tool and idiot. Why didn't the Bankers and the FED Etc think this thing through. If they bankrupt America whose going to buy all the junk shipped here from China to WallyWorld("Walmart") stores. Broke people cannot purchase, pay taxes or be in use of credit or maintain a standard of living. In others words broke people can't stimulate an economy. Like the Main Stream news and government and the FED keeps telling you "everything's gonna be all right", just keep hope alive.
and honestly, truth be told, nobody in Europe really wants to buy any of that crap. lol. seriously. France, Italy, England, Germany .. these places are artistic and inventive and cultural meccas of the world. no - frickin - way - are they going to want to swap out cute boutique blouses for some Kathy Lee line of rack-ready clothes made by kids in a sweatshop in China or Vietnam. no way are they going to want to swap out the incredibly functional and rugged kitchen gadgets for some plastic piece of crap.
we're basically China's only major customer, and unless China has a culturally revolutionary turnaround and starts embracing "quality" in a major way - we're going to remain China's only major customer. and, well - if China starts embracing "quality" - they're gonna have to raise their prices.
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