banktime.com

A compelling blog post in the New York Times today questioned what would be happening to those Americans exhausting their unemployment insurance. The number of unemployed workers staying out of a job for months and months instead of weeks is growing quickly, and the costs are more than just financial in nature. The fact that layoffs have slowed has created a false hope in America, say analysts. The fact is that the number of new job openings with relation to the size of the unemployed population is at a record low as of November. So, in reality, it’s just as hard – if not harder – to get a job than it ever was before. In December of 2008, only twenty-three percent of the unemployed workforce had been out of a job for at least twenty-seven weeks. One short year later, in December 2009, almost forty percent had already been out of work for at least that long. According to the blog post, about four percent of the overall civilian work force could be categorized as long-term unemployed.

The trend is bad for more than simply the fact that these people are running the risk of exhausting their unemployment insurance. Research shows that the long-term unemployed also tend to suffer a loss of self-esteem and the feeling of self-worth over a long period of time after discouraging job searches and extensive periods of rejection from potential employers. What will happen to all these people, who the blog post called “idle workers?” It’s hard to say. It’s been said that an unemployed worker takes ten years on average to regain the salary that they lost. We’re now looking at a LOT of workers facing a LONG period of time during which they will be not making enough money possibly to get by.