People want to work and need to work but with long periods of unemployment they become demoralized....
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Megan McArdle summarizes the research findings this way:
"Short of death or a debilitating terminal disease, long-term unemployment is about the worst thing that can happen to you in the modern world. It’s economically awful, socially terrible, and a horrifying blow to your self-esteem and happiness. It cuts you off from the mass of your peers and puts stress on your family, making it likely that further awful things, like divorce or suicide, will be in your near future."
For many people, going without work for more than six months can kick off a vicious cycle or financial and personal crises that may take years to break out of.
10 reasons that long-term unemployment is a national catastrophe
And yet, we continue to do nothing about it.
Unemployment
is bad. Obviously long-term unemployment is worse. But it's not just a
little worse, it's horrifically worse.
As a companion to our eight charts that describe the problem, here are the top ten reasons why long-term unemployment is such a national catastrophe:
As a companion to our eight charts that describe the problem, here are the top ten reasons why long-term unemployment is such a national catastrophe:
i) It's way higher than it's ever been before. The long-term unemployment rate peaked at a rate nearly double the worst we'd ever seen in the past, and it's been coming down only slowly ever since.
ii) It's widespread. ..."the long-term unemployed are fairly evenly distributed across the age and industry spectrum."
iii) It's brutal. Long-term unemployment produces a sharp loss of income, with all the stress that entails. Plus, it produces deep distress, worse mental and physical health, higher mortality rates, hampers children’s educational progress, and lowers their future earnings.
iv) It's long-lasting.
v) It dramatically reduces the prospect of getting another job.
vi) It turns cyclical unemployment into structural unemployment.
Structural unemployment is worse: it's caused by a mismatch between the skills employers want and the skills workers have.
"Skills become obsolete, contacts atrophy, information atrophies, and they get stigmatized," says Harry Holzer of Georgetown University." Economists call this effect "hysteresis," and there's plenty of evidence that we're suffering from it for perhaps the first time in recent American history.
vii) It hurts the economy.
viii) Cutting off unemployment benefits makes things even worse.
ix) There still aren't enough jobs to go around. There are still three job seekers for every available job, which means that this simply isn't a matter of incentives. It's a matter of there being too few jobs for everyone.
X) Practically everyone, liberal and conservative alike, agrees that this is a catastrophe. And yet, they continue to do nothing about it.
| Mon Dec. 23, 2013
Read More: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/12/10-reasons-long-term-unemployment-national-catastrophe
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