I have long claimed that counting someone as one no longer seeking employment after unemployment benefits expire was nothing more than a deceptive way to cover up structural unemployment. This was true long before Republicans trashed the US economy, causing the current recession, largely because employers needed more highly skilled workers than the US labor force could provide and because automation and increases in productivity were cutting the number of available jobs. Now it is far worse, because of outsourcing. There are simply far more workers than there are jobs. Consequently, next year the Bureau of Labor Statistics will track people as unemployed for five years. It’s a first step, but far more needs to be done than just tracking people.
So many Americans have been jobless for so long that the government is changing how it records long-term unemployment.
Citing what it calls "an unprecedented rise" in long-term unemployment, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), beginning Saturday, will raise from two years to five years the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless.
The move could help economists better measure the severity of the nation’s prolonged economic downturn.
>[sic]The change is a sign that bureau officials "are afraid that a cap of two years may be ‘understating the true average duration’ — but they won’t know by how much until they raise the upper limit," says Linda Barrington, an economist who directs the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Likening recessionary unemployment spikes in recent decades to a storm at sea, she says, "The waves are getting higher, and we want to understand the intricacies of how they’re made up."
The change involves the form used for the bureau’s Current Population Survey, based on interviews with thousands of the unemployed. Currently, no matter how much longer than two years someone has been out of work, the form allows interviewers to check off only "99 weeks or over." Starting next month, jobless stints of "260 weeks and over" can be selected on the response form.
"The BLS doesn’t make such changes lightly," Barrington says. Stacey Standish, a bureau assistant press officer, says the two-year limit has been used for 33 years.
A two-year limit hampers economists’ ability to compare this recession’s effect on the job market with another severe one in the early 1980s, Barrington says.
Although "this feels like something we’ve not experienced" since the Great Depression, she says, economists need more information to be sure.
The change will not affect how the unemployed are counted or the unemployment rate is computed nor how long those eligible for unemployment benefits receive them. Analysts call the move a sign of the times.
"We realize more and more people are unemployed longer than 99 weeks, so we need to break it down further," Standish says… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Common Dreams>
I suppose that government is not willing to go so far as to include the long term unemployed in the unemployment rate, let alone do something to help the long term unemployed.
In my opinion, the old paradigm of distributing resources based on capital and labor has failed, and it’s time to look for a new paradigm, before the old one collapses amid violence and discord.
What, in your opinion, might be a better basis than capital and labor for distributing resources?
4 Responses to “Looking at Unemployment a New Way”
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The government can reclassify all it wants, but none of it will produce real jobs providing real, quality paychecks! This country is SICK, Washington—get a grip, and let’s do something for the 99ers!!!! How about paying them benefits for an extra 99 weeks? That would be a start…
A good start, Jack.
Personally i would make unemployment a permanent source of income but I would also be putting all of that talent to work for their checks. If a civil engineer for example is out of work then put them in working groups locally and have them begin to design the necessary infrastructure and light rail systems and improvements. They may not make a hundred grand a year but if you gave them a place to work and made UI tax free it would compensate for the cost of transportation. And more importantly it would give them a sense of self worth, a sense of value to the community they live in.
This could be done with every job section. People who labored for a living could be set to dismantling all of the abandoned useless buildings, dismantle not demolish, and start the recycling of the internal steel structure, wire and brick for reuse. $300 a week may be much less than the work is worth but for God’s and these peoples sake give them work to do so they can at least be productive.
When the few industries that are still open are seeing that they have a WPA type of competition they will try to hire people away from those jobs or try to contract for those jobs which if that were to happen they would have to pay prevailing wages for whatever the job title requires. No engineer for example should make less than 50k a year and once working again in the private sector they can start to pay income taxes again.
The only hold up would be it would take an act of a dysfunctional government to get a program like this running. They do not want the unemployed, long or short term to have any pride left, they want us defeated so when business starts to hire again we will go back to work for a minimum wage or a reduced minimum wage so we can compete with Chinese employees.
the problem is I believe we are now entering into a hyper inflationary financial position and no one working for a minimum will be able to improve their condition no matter if they work or not.
Mark, I like these ideas. Personally I think we have enough need for infrastructure repair and new infrastructure to keep many working for many years. I also like the idea of a minimum standard of living for all that exceeds the poverty level and requires community service of all capable of providing it.