"Long-term joblessness hits older workers hard; Time is not on their side" by Megan Woolhouse | Globe Staff, March 25, 2013
Lee Bodzioch kept hearing that the economy was improving, so he redoubled his efforts to find a job, sending out résumés by the dozen and spending thousands of dollars to sharpen his technology skills in courses at Boston University.
But at age 57 — with decades of experience and professional connections — he feels shut out. After two years of unemployment, phone calls from prospective employers are increasingly rare. He has had one interview in the last seven months.
“Nothing is happening. Next to nothing,” said Bodzioch, of Billerica. “I don’t know what more I can do.”
Bodzioch is among those trapped in one of the most intractable problems facing the US economy — long-term unemployment — and older workers are being hit the hardest.
The number of people 45 and older who have been jobless for more than a year has quadrupled since 2007, accounting for nearly half of the 3.5 million Americans out of work for more than a year, according to the US Department of Labor.
“Historically, we’ve never seen anything that comes close to this; these numbers are unbelievably high,” said Andrew Sum, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies. “And the longer you’re unemployed, the more likely you are to leave the labor force, and the more likely it’s an early retirement for you.”
Which is good because then you drop off the unemployment rolls and are no longer counted -- and then government and its mouthpiece media can crow the unemployment rate drop and how great the economy is doing.
This is not a sandy-beaches-and-sunsets type of retirement. After years of financial independence, many must lower standards of living, deplete savings, or rely on spouses’ earnings. The majority are older white men, according to the Labor Department, including many college-educated workers who rebounded from job losses earlier in their careers, only to see employment prospects dim in what should be their prime earning years.
Mines already gone, but I'd get yours out of the bank before the government "taxes" it like in Cyprus, and the last sentence is basically my life story.
The longer that people are unemployed, the harder it becomes for them to find work, economists say. Their skills atrophy or become outdated. They lose contacts and connections. They are viewed by prospective employers as damaged goods.
“It’s the problem I worry about the most,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight, a Lexington forecasting firm. “We’re condemning these people, creating this permanent underclass.”
But you know what? Banks are booming and the corporations are in an age of golden profits but not hiring. Strange how things worked out, and how at odds it is with the daily shit shovel of business news from AmeriKa's corporate pre$$, huh?
Here are three of their stories....
I don't need to read them because I'm living it.
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