Who Are the Long-Term Unemployed? 13MAI10 from MOJO

 I think the media is ignoring the long term unemployed because it is impossible for them to honestly report on the ugly truth of the situation, that is, the problem is one of working America's own creation. When the unemployed were working and had money to spend they didn't care that the money they were spending at Wal-Mart on cheap imports from the PRC was helping eliminate jobs in the U.S. and degrading workers wages, rights and protections. The boom years, for too many Americans, were expressions of greed, not need, a mad scramble to get more, more, more for them with no concern or consideration for the impact their decisions on anyone else. I know it is not possible to buy American all the time, but one can think about what they are buying, and if it is really needed, and where it was made and what effect their purchase and the retailer they are buying from will have on some other American worker.  The American consumer became as greedy and irresponsible as corporate America. Now the chickens are home to roost. People are scrambling for jobs, and companies are hiring younger workers who are too scared to stand up for their rights because they are just thankful for a job. Companies are paying less and providing less in benefits while demanding more, and getting it, from their employees. This will continue as long as the American work force tolerates it, and since younger workers have no memory of job security brought about by an active, vibrant union community in the U.S., the long term unemployed are in for a long haul of economic decline while corporate America will continue to reap huge profits and pay obscene salaries and bonuses to CEOs and upper management. Below is the Mother Jones article.

Why is the media paying less attention to unemployment today than it did in 1983? I ran down a bunch of possible reasons yesterday, and one of them was this: "Maybe it has something to do with the fact that today's stubbornly high numbers are concentrated among the long-term unemployed."
I wasn't quite sure what I had in mind when I wrote that, but the chart I included in yesterday's post showed that, in fact, short-term unemployment had peaked about a year ago and come down pretty sharply since then. Long-term unemployment, by contrast, just kept skyrocketing. Today, nearly 4.5% of the population has been unemployed for more than six months, nearly double the previous record set in 1983, and it shows no signs of flattening out. Perhaps, I thought, that segment of the population was somehow less visible, or less sympathetic, or less something that somehow translated into less media attention. Today, Catherine Rampell writes about this in the New York Times:

Unemployment numbers show a notable split in the labor pool, with most unemployed workers finding jobs after a relatively short period of time, but a sizable chunk of the labor force unable to find new work even after months or years of searching. This group — comprising generally older workers — has pulled up the average length of time that a current worker has been unemployed to a record high of 33 weeks as of April. The percentage of unemployed people who have been looking for jobs for more than six months is at 45.9 percent, the highest in at least six decades.

Italics mine. Rampell's story focuses on Cynthia Norton, 52, an administrative assistant in Jacksonville who's been unable to find work for the past two years because companies have been shedding clerical workers during the recession and then finding that they can get along fine without them even when the economy improves. So Norton is working as a Wal-Mart cashier and she's not happy about it:

Because of the Wal-Mart job, she has been ineligible for unemployment benefits, and she says she made too much money to qualify for food stamps or Medicaid last year. “If you’re not a minority, or not handicapped, or not a young parent, or not a veteran, or not in some other certain category, your hope of finding help and any hope of finding work out there is basically nil,” Ms. Norton says. “I know. I’ve looked.”

I'm not quite sure what conclusions to draw from this, but the recession's extreme effect on a small class of long-term unemployed seems like it deserves more attention than it usually gets. What's more, if that class is mostly 50-something workers, not 20-somethings, that's significant too. Politically, it might explain why tea party activism — which skews older — has taken off so strongly, and economically it might explain....what? I need to noodle on that. But there's something there.