Unemployment numbers, again...and the news isn't good...

According to several reports, including this one at CNN.com, the US Labor Department is reporting that the unemployment rate dropped to 6.7 percent in December, from 7 percent. This is good news, right?

Well, not so much. That's because the drop isn't a result of more jobs being created. Labor reports that just 74,000 jobs were created during December, while 347,000 people quit looking for work. Certainly, a few of those 347,000 were people who retired, but the vast majority of them are people who have been out of work for awhile and have simply given up hope that they will get hired for a new job and stopped looking.

The thing is, that isn't "just an excuse" or an unfounded assumption. Another report shows that, here in the United States, people who have been out of work for a year or longer have just a 9 percent chance of getting hired for another job. Even those who have been out of work for 4 to 6 months only have a 16 percent chance of getting hired again. This is a real problem when you consider that the average unemployed job-seeker has been out of work for 37 weeks - that's just over 9 months.

The other part of the December jobs report that doesn't really make for comforting reading is that a huge number of the jobs created in December were temporary seasonal positions in the retail sector. Most of those people are likely either already unemployed again or will be soon. A substantial portion of the other jobs created last month were also temporary, within the service sector.

And that illustrates another big issue for job-seekers; employers in many sectors are only hiring temporary workers now, or they are hiring for permanent positions, but those positions are only part-time. Additionally, many of the positions only pay minimum wage. In most states, even a full-time position that pays minimum wage still leaves the employee making a wage that flirts with the poverty line.

No, really. The minimum wage in California is currently $8.00 per hour. If a person held a full-time job (40 hours per week) that paid this wage, and worked every one of those available hours during the year (no time off for vacations or sick days, since most minimum wage jobs do not provide paid time off for either vacation or when the employee is ill), their pay would amount to $16,640 for the year. But, remember, that's before taxes - after withholding for income taxes and social security, their take-home pay would be several thousand dollars less than that. Their take-home pay, in fact, would probably be right around the poverty level for a single person, which was in 2013 figured to be $11,490 for the year.

But I digress...today's subject isn't really pay once someone finds a job. The topic here is how difficult it is to find a job in the first place.

And I am here to tell you exactly how hard that is, and how easy it is to get discouraged when you read the statistics on how difficult it is to get hired when you've been out of work for a while. It's something I know first-hand, having been out for work for just over two years now.

Now, I'm still looking, but I don't really have much hope that anyone is going to hire me. And I'm stubborn enough that I'm actively working on getting alternative revenue streams going. As anyone who follows along here knows, I'm in the process of writing a book, although that isn't the sort of thing that pays as you go. I'm also lucky enough that I can do things like knit and counted cross-stitch, and I'm the process of accumulating an inventory of items to sell.

But, I have to say, it makes me angry that employers write off job applicants simply because they haven't worked in a certain number of weeks. Some employers won't even consider an application from someone who is not already employed. My question to them is, what are the rest of us supposed to do? We get labeled as "lazy" and "just wanting to live off the government dole" by certain segments of the political spectrum, yet we aren't given a chance to even compete for jobs. In my own case, that means that the education on my resume (I have a four-year degree, earned with honors) and my skills don't even get taken into consideration. All the people looking at my resume see is that my last job ended two years ago and they toss it - and me - in the reject file.

Oh, I've been doing volunteer work in the time since I've been out of a paid job, but that doesn't really count for anything, despite what many people - most of them looking for volunteer workers - will tell you. I ran into that problem years ago, when I was fresh out of a two-year paralegal education program and looking for work in the legal field. As part of that very vigorous program, I was required to do internships. Well, one was required, but I ended up doing the required internship plus a couple of other internships with local government agencies. During the main internship, I worked for about six months for a judge. I did substantive work, rather than just filing papers and hanging around. Yet, when I finished the program and started looking for work, no one would even consider my resume because unpaid work, it turns out, doesn't count as work.

This leads to another issue I've been finding as I look for work: there are places that want my labor, but only if I'm willing to give that labor and my time for free. I'm good enough for work, just not worthy enough to be paid for it. And, indeed, I've been reading recently (and I'm sorry, but I didn't save the links) that this is how some corporations have started staffing their offices. Instead of hiring people they have to pay, they take on student interns who work for free, not only relieving the corporations of having to offer benefits to employees but removing the obligation to even pay these workers.

It makes me wonder if that's the way this country is headed - toward a new sort of corporate serfdom, in which only the lucky few can actually get paying positions, while the rest of us are pushed into employment that isn't really employment while the government subsidizes the living expenses of these new serfs. If the trends represented by current bad news on employment continue, it could get that bad.

Jobs, joblessness, and living in the real world...

I just read this op-ed piece over on CNN's website, and I think that the writer, Heidi Shierholz, has the right of it.

It has always bothered me, as I've written about here before, that the unemployment rate is figured based on the number of people actively looking for work, not on the number of people who are actually out of work. It is not helpful, except for whichever administration is currently in power to cover their own butts on the issue of joblessness. They need to cut it out and own the fact that the economy is not all roses and sunshine, that there are a lot of people who want to work who are not able to get jobs, and that there are even more people out here who are working, but are in part-time jobs not commensurate with their abilities and qualifications, much less their needs.

I think it is especially important that she points out that most of the declines in the unemployment rate as reported since it peaked in late 2009 is not due to people getting jobs that they desperately need. Instead, most of those declines, which make it seem like more people are working, are due to the fact that people are getting discouraged and giving up on looking for work. Once they quit looking, they drop off the radar as far as the government is concerned and are no longer counted as being unemployed. Even though they are still unemployed.

Shierholz also argues that the excuse given by many in the corporate world for not filling jobs, that there are no qualified applicants for the jobs they have open, is not the truth. Instead, she says, lagging demand means that there is just not enough demand for products to justify hiring more people. She links this to the fact that wages - and thus buying power - have remained flat or have actually declined for most US workers since the year 2000. People who are working just don't have as much money to spend, which has meant declines in demand for the things that workers would buy if they made enough money to cover more than the necessities of food, rent, utilities, and other essentials.

This all makes sense to me as an individual who is currently unemployed. I'm not discouraged yet, even though I've been actively seeking work for over a year and a half with dismal results. Although I haven't quit looking for a job, I'm getting more and more frustrated, between employers who don't want to even consider me because I'm not young and people who seem to think that I don't want to work because I haven't found a job yet. I keep hearing people say, "Well, why don't you go out and get a job?" They don't seem to understand that you don't just walk into an office or. store or factory and demand that they put you to work. They seem to think that because it is "based on a true story", the movie "Erin Brockovich" represents how the real world works.

If you've seen that movie, you know that Erin, as portrayed by Julia Roberts, just walks into her attorney's office and starts working, refusing to leave when it is explained to her that she doesn't work there. You know what would happen if you tried that in real life? Best case scenario, you'd be escorted off the premises by armed security guards. Worst case scenario, you'd be hauled off to jail. Real life just does not work that way. If Erin Brockovich did indeed get work that way, she is probably the only person who has ever successfully used that tactic. Anyway, no one I know has ever gotten a job that way.

Anyway, if the current unemployment rate is something that concerns you - and it should, since even if you are employed now, you could find yourself out of work sometime in the future - click on the link and read Shierholz's article. She argues for some solutions that I think make real sense. I just wish official Washington would pay attention.

Now, why would anyone get discouraged hunting for work?

I just happened on an interesting AP piece on unemployment on Yahoo! News. It talks about the "discouraged", those who have been unemployed for a considerable length of time. They get so frustrated with the situation as it is that they just give up looking and survive however they can. They depend on the social safety net. They move in with family or friends. They just can't bear one more rejection. And they fall off the government's radar regarding the unemployed.

The article points out that the unemployment rate in the US dropped from 7.7 percent in February to 7.6 percent in March. This sounds like good news, right? Except not so much. In the same period, the "participation rate", the number of adults in the labor force (those who are either working or looking for work) dropped to 63.3 percent, the lowest it has been since May 1979.

You see, the dirty little secret about the unemployment rate that no one wants to talk about is that if you stop looking for work because you've given up on finding something, anything, that will bring some money in, the government no longer considers you to be unemployed in the sense that you no longer count in the statistics on employment. So, the drop in the unemployment rate last month doesn't mean, necessarily, that more people are working. It can mean, and in this case probably does mean, that fewer people are looking.

That is why, when I talk about the local unemployment rate in the county where I live, I talk about the official rate and the unofficial rate. The official unemployment rate in my county was at 14.6 percent in January of this year, then jumped to 15.4 percent in February (if the local numbers for March are out yet, I haven't been able to find them). As far as any of us who are looking for jobs around here can figure, the real figure is closer to 20 percent, when you figure in people who have just given up looking.

The thing is, it's really easy to become discouraged looking for work these days, and it isn't just from being told "No" so much. It's the not hearing anything. Most companies take applications and resumes electronically now. At a lot of businesses, even fast food restaurants, you can't walk in and fill out an application, get interviewed by a manager, and get hired or not. Instead, if you walk into one of these places, they'll give you a card with an Internet address on it, which you are expected to go home (or to the library or wherever you can find Internet access), log on, and fill out an application there. Further up the employment ladder, most companies today require prospective employees to fill out an application online, submit their resumes online, and then sit and wait for a response.

It's a response that often never comes. A lot of them don't acknowledge that they've received your resume or application. Some of the have a message that comes up at the end of the process that more or less says, "Don't call us; we'll call you." If your resume or application does not get through their key-words filter, it gets binned and you never know if anyone has seen it or not. If you're lucky, you'll get a call a week or a month or several months later (hiring processes often seem to take a very long time) for a telephone interview. This is the second step in the weeding out process. If you don't say the right things during the phone interview, which after often as short as ten minutes or so, you'll never hear from them again.

If you're very lucky, and you do say the right things, you might be called for a second phone interview. You might even be called in for a face-to-face interview. Even then, even if you go in and talk to an actual interviewer or panel of interviewers, this does not guarantee you'll get a "thanks but no-thanks" call or letter or e-mail. It is apparently acceptable workplace etiquette in the twenty-first century to just ignore anyone you aren't hiring. Now, I'd call that rude, but I'm old-fashioned, apparently.

This is convenient for the Human Resources people, the ones who do the hiring, apparently. It's easier to just ignore people than to have to actually tell them you aren't going to hire them. But it leaves those of us who are looking for jobs just hanging, not sure what our status is in the hiring process. Yes, we usually get the message when we don't hear anything for an extended period of time. Still, in the short term it leaves the applicant in a limbo of "is there hope/is there no hope" of being hired for any particular job they've applied for/interviewed for.

I hear these stories all the time among my network of fellow job-seekers. They've send their applications, they've been interviewed, they feel good about how they've performed. And then...crickets. They hear nothing..

And people wonder why people looking for work in this economy get frustrated, get discouraged, just give up.

I fight that frustration and discouragement all the time. I get to the point where I can't see why I should even bother to look for work. It might be more difficult for me than some others, because my skill set is more limited than someone who is in sales or management, fields where the basic skill is applicable in a wider number of positions and industries. Still, it isn't easy for anyone looking for work, and the urge to just give it up is often strong. I hear it all the time from my friends who are also looking.

Personally, I'm looking more to entrepreneurship, making my own job. But there are drawbacks there, in self-employment, as well. Say you do get something off the ground. Or, you're actually working for a company, but they hire you on not as an employee but as a private contractor (which was my situation in my previous job). And, suddenly, your business isn't doing so well, or the company you're contracting to doesn't need your services any more. Not only are you looking for work again, but you aren't even eligible for unemployment compensation. Additionally, as I've noted here before, a lot of companies don't want to hire people who have been self-employed.

Still, if no one else is going to give me a job, I've got to either put something together for myself or end up hungry and on the street. I'm much fonder of the idea of making my own job, even with the potential drawbacks. And that, the idea that I might be able to put myself back to work rather than relying on corporate America to hire me, is the only thing that keeps me from giving up and becoming, well, not even a statistic, but one of those left out of the statistics - or at least the unemployment statistics - altogether.