The longer Solano people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work in Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Rio Vista, Suisun, Vacaville, Vallejo and neighboring Napa and Contra Costa County.
That is a fact of life that much of Europe, with its underclass of permanently idle workers, knows all too well. But it is a lesson that the United States seems to be just learning. This country has some of the highest levels of long-term unemployment — out of work longer than six months — it has ever recorded. Meanwhile, job growth has been, and looks to remain, disappointingly slow, indicating that those out of work for a while are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Even if the government report on Friday shows the expected improvement in hiring by business, it will not be enough to make a real dent in those totals. So the legions of long-term unemployed in Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Rio Vista, Suisun, Vacaville, Vallejo and neighboring Napa and Contra Costa County will probably be idle for significantly longer than their counterparts in past recessions, reducing their chances of eventually finding a job even when the economy becomes more robust…. New data from the Labor Department, provided to The New York Times, shows that people out of work fewer than five weeks are more than three times as likely to find a job in the coming month than people who have been out of work for over a year, with a re-employment rate of 30.7 percent versus 8.7 percent, respectively. Likewise, previous economic studies, many based on Europe’s job market struggles, have shown that people who become disconnected from the work force have more trouble getting hired, probably because of some combination of stigma, discouragement and deterioration of their skills. This is one of the biggest challenges facing policy makers in the United States as they seek to address unemployment. Its underlying tenet — that time exacerbates the problem — means that the longer Congress squabbles about how to increase job growth, the more intractable the situation becomes. This, in turn, means Washington would need to pursue more aggressive (and, perversely, more politically difficult) job-creating policies in order to succeed. Even reaching an agreement over whether to extend benefits yet again has proved contentious. Several factors lead to this downward spiral of the unemployed. In some cases, the long-term unemployed were poor performers in their previous positions and among the first to be terminated when the recession began. These people are weak job candidates with less impressive résumés and references. In other instances, those who lost jobs may have been good workers but were laid off from occupations or industries that are in permanent decline, like manufacturing. But economists have tried to control for these selection issues, and studies comparing the fates of similar workers have also shown that the experience of unemployment itself damages job prospects…. Many unemployed workers from fret about how to explain the yawning gaps on their résumés. Some are calling themselves independent “consultants” or “entrepreneurs.”… “From what I’ve seen, employers do tend to get suspicious when there’s a long-term gap in people’s résumés,” said James Whelly, deputy director of work force development at the San Francisco Human Services Agency. “Even though everyone on an intellectual level knows that this is a unique time in the economy, those old habits are hard to break with hiring managers and H.R. departments who are doing the screening.” It does not help when job seekers are repeatedly rejected — or worse, ignored. Constant rejection not only discourages workers from job-hunting as intensively, but also makes people less confident when they do land interviews…. Though economists generally agree that getting the long-term unemployed back to work quickly is necessary to keep people from becoming unemployable, the mechanism to do so is unclear. Most forms of stimulus try to create business conditions that foster the nation’s output growth, which encourages companies to hire. Output has been growing slowly, however, and has not stoked much job creation. There have also been other indirect incentives, like a small tax break for hiring unemployed workers, but as yet their effectiveness is unknown. Direct employment programs — like the public works projects of the New Deal and World War II — may be the fastest way to put people back to work, economists say. But those raise concerns of crowding out businesses and displacing other workers. Also the approach, which smacks of socialism to some, seems politically untenable at the moment. One possible compromise might be broader-scale retraining and apprenticeship programs…. The Obama administration has recently thrown its support behind an effort to overhaul community college retraining programs which may help college students coming from Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Rio Vista, Suisun, Vacaville, Vallejo and neighboring Napa and Contra Costa County.
Sourced from Mike Reagan, Solano County Supervisor
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