No Job? Too Bad!

It’s still happening, folks. Long-term unemployed are still being shut out of jobs simply because they had the bad luck to be laid off during the worst recession since the Great Depression.

This isn’t just my cynical take, folks. When researchers sent out of over a thousand fictitious resumes, all with roughly the same qualifications, guess who got called in for the interview? Not those who had been out of work for six months or more, even though the long-term jobless in some instances had better qualifications than those who were called in for an interview.

This is a very sad Catch-22. How can unemployed people get back to work if they are summarily dismissed for job openings? How can they become tax-paying, productive citizens again?

I know what the companies will say: If someone has been unemployed for so long, their skills atrophy. So why should we hire a person we will have to train? Companies are loath to train new workers.

Now, as someone who has been through this situation, I can say that is a completely bogus argument. During my unemployment, I did freelance work, putting my unemployment benefits at risk, because I wanted to show potential employers fresh work.

And yes, when I started my job, I had to learn new skills. But with hard work and minimal training from a co-worker, I learned. It wasn’t easy, and I admit, mistakes were made in the beginning. But honestly, some of the new skills didn’t require all that much training; most workers can puzzle it out on their own, as I did and still do.

Companies further howl that they should be allowed to make their own employment decisions, unfettered by regulations. But this practice is clearly discrimination and should be outlawed. It’s illegal.

There are solutions. I say we give free tuition to any community college to anyone unemployed for over a year. They can learn new skills and get back into the working world.

I recently read that the younger brother of the pair who set off bombs at the Boston Marathon received a scholarship to attend college, a good college most of us would never have the opportunity to attend.

So we give money to someone who hates this country so much he kills innocent people but we can’t give a job or tuition to someone who has been out of work for six months?