JEFFREY
BROWN: And now back to the jobs picture.
Despite
the good news in today's employment report, nearly two million Americans 55 and
older are still out of work.
Economics
correspondent Paul Solman looks at the continuing struggles of the long-term
jobless in their 50s. It's the latest in an occasional series on older workers
and part of his ongoing reporting Making Sen$e of financial news.
JOE
CARBONE, President, The WorkPlace: I don't want you to think for a
minute that I'm somebody who doesn't understand what unemployment is like.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Joe Carbone runs the WorkPlace, a job training center in
Bridgeport, Connecticut.
JOE
CARBONE: I was unemployed once for eight-and-a-half months. I used to
drive 20 miles to do a little grocery shopping so I wouldn't meet anybody who
would be able to look at me and ask, “Did you get a job yet?” So, I know what
it can do.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Given the empathy that Carbone and his staff convey, it's no
surprise that the unemployed flock here for emotional support.
WOMAN: I
have been on the Internet daily, all day, eight hours a day. I can't find
anything.
PAUL
SOLMAN: These folks have all been unemployed long-term, and as you may
have noticed, most are 55 and older. There's been lots of talk about the
improving jobs picture of late, and especially today, when the official
unemployment rate dropped to 7.5 percent, the lowest since 2008.
Our own
more inclusive measure of the un- and under-employed is down to 16 percent, the
lowest since we started tracking it in 2010. But in Bridgeport and at job fairs
around the country, the reality is brutal for the more than four million
Americans who remain out of work six months or more.
For
those 55 and older, it takes about a year on average to find work, longer than
for any other age group.
JOE
CARBONE: They're carrying a double whammy, not just the long-term
unemployment, but they're 50 and older. It makes things that are bad even
worse.
PAUL
SOLMAN: So, how much of a factor is age in explaining the stunning
long-term unemployment numbers? We assembled a group of the jobless to ask them
bluntly, is your age the reason you can't find work?
FRANK
RENDE, Seeking Employment: Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Beyond a shadow
of a doubt.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Fifty-nine-year-old facilities manager Frank Rende lost his job
four years ago.
FRANK
RENDE: We got here in the first place because we were in the highest
salary range. We were the first to go. We're going to be the last to come back.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Software developer Geoffrey Weglarz, 55, has been looking for
two years.
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ, Seeking Employment: I have applied for 481 jobs.
PAUL
SOLMAN: But none of them have panned out?
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: None of them have panned out, no. They think that anybody over a
certain age is going to be used up.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Longtime admin assistant Debora Ducksworth, on the hunt since
'09, says that, paradoxically, experience is now a negative.
DEBORA
DUCKSWORTH, Seeking Employment: I have 30 years of experience, and you will
see something that says, we want you to have X-amount of skills, but we only
want you to have no more than two years of experience.
PAUL
SOLMAN: And all they're trying to do there is screen you out?
DEBORA
DUCKSWORTH: Exactly. And now I'm thinking, I'm going to be 60 in October.
Is anyone ever going to hire me?
ALICIA
MUNNELL, Boston College: We actually did a survey a few years ago where
we asked H.R. types how they viewed older workers.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Economist Alicia Munnell says the human resource managers were
skeptical of workers like those in Bridgeport.
ALICIA
MUNNELL: They said they worried about their ability to learn new things,
about their physical stamina and basically how long are they going to stay.
And, so, it's -- when you looked at the whole picture of their assessment of
older workers, you really wouldn't go out of your way to hire one.
PAUL
SOLMAN: And there's another reason an employer might be loath to hire an
older worker: If things don't work out, will they be sued?
Mary
Corbin thinks age is the reason she was let go a year-and-a-half ago.
MARY
CORBIN, Seeking Employment: No one under 50 was laid off, and it was a
large amount of people. In the package that they gave everyone, they
emphasized, for signing the package, you will not come back and sue us for age
discrimination.
PAUL
SOLMAN: And you couldn't afford to not take the severance?
MARY
CORBIN: Right. I did finally sign the package, because I needed that
income to take care of my family.
PAUL
SOLMAN: But, according to Alicia Munnell, employers may simply think
they're protecting themselves.
ALICIA
MUNNELL: We have these age discrimination laws that may have a perverse
effect, in the sense that you get -- you're really locked in once you hire an
older worker. You can't fire one, so why hire one to begin with?
PAUL
SOLMAN: Event planner Patty Ford has been on the market about a year.
She's 57, but:
PATTY
FORD, Seeking Employment: My resume only has 10 to 12 years of
experience on there.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Why?
PATTY
FORD: Because that was what I was advised to do, because you don't
want people to know how old you are.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Geoffrey Weglarz does the same thing.
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: I cut it off at a certain point. Earlier in my career, I was an
actor. So, my career in business, in technology starts 15 years later than they
would assume just out of college.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Are you are you passing for someone younger?
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: Yes. There was one time when I was coming in for a face-to-face
interview. And the H.R. recruiter saw me, assumed who I was, and his face -- I
could just see his face almost fall when he saw me and how old I was. After
that, I pretty much got pushed through two of the people I was supposed to talk
to. The other three got busy, and I couldn't see them.
PAUL
SOLMAN: So, as you're saying that, everybody here is nodding. You have
all been through that?
FRANK
RENDE: You can just sense, you know, that you're losing your audience.
DEBORA
DUCKSWORTH: It's like, I'm going to give her maybe a half-an-hour of my
time, but, you know, they're stressing because they really don't want to give
you that time at all.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Recruiter Nick Corcodilos runs a website for job seekers and
also writes the weekly "Ask the Headhunter" column for our Making
Sen$e site. Look, he says, an employer can have legitimate concerns about older
candidates.
NICK
CORCODILOS, AsktheHeadHunter.com: The employer's just trying to figure out
who can actually get the job done. So, there are some older workers -- probably
a lot -- who simply don't have the skills or the wherewithal to do a certain
kind of job. There, it's up to the worker to go out and bring themselves up to
speed and do it in an aggressive way, do it as quickly as possible.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Moreover, from the firm's perspective, says Alicia Munnell, you
will probably get more bang for your buck with a younger hire.
ALICIA
MUNNELL: People's salaries go up every year for cost of living and some
promotions and productivity growth. And they get more expensive on the health
care front just because they have more ailments.
And
most of the studies show that people's abilities peak around age 40 and then
sort of decline gently thereafter. So, you have this mismatch of sort of rise
in compensation, steady at best productivity, and it makes older people not
look like such a good deal.
PAUL
SOLMAN: That may be why so many older workers are given lower pay if and
when they are rehired. Bank executive Mike Leahy was unemployed for two years
before he finally found work as a branch manager at a small bank. He took a pay
cut of 15 percent.
MIKE
LEAHY, Bank Executive: That wasn't unexpected. I was so grateful for
an opportunity in a job that I had done before because I really was one of
those guys, I really wasn't sure what was going to happen.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Do you think that once you're out of work for six months, a year
in your case, two years, that you're damaged goods?
MIKE
LEAHY: I absolutely believe that the fact that you are not working now
and you're of a certain age is the issue.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Leahy got the job through The WorkPlace program platform to
employment, which matches long-term unemployed with firms that have openings.
MIKE
LEAHY: I wake up every day and, believe it or not, I am thrilled to be
going to work. I don't think I'm going to lose that for some time. I may not
lose that for the rest of my working career, because I know now how fragile
this is.
PAUL
SOLMAN: Fragile, a good word to describe any job these days and the
finances of those who for a long time haven't had one, like Geoffrey Weglarz.
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: I have gone through my savings. I have gone through my 401(k).
PAUL
SOLMAN: Completely?
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: Completely. My unemployment last check is next week. I have
about $2,000 dollars to my name, and, after that, I don't know.
PAUL
SOLMAN: And you don't know how you're going to make that up?
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: I have no fallback position. I'm behind on my mortgage. I'm on
food stamps, and I'm on financial hardship for both electricity and for gas.
PAUL
SOLMAN: And without that, you would be without electricity and gas?
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: Yes.
PAUL
SOLMAN: And without food stamps, you wouldn't have enough to eat?
GEOFFREY
WEGLARZ: After the unemployment runs out, probably.
PAUL
SOLMAN: When The WorkPlace's Joe Carbone hears stories like this, he
wonders why more isn't being done to help.
JOE
CARBONE: We have got special programs here for veterans, and we should,
for people with disabilities, and we should, you know, for dislocated workers,
and we should. We see a new population that are unemployable because of the
length of their unemployment occurring during the worst recession since the
Great Depression, and we're just ignoring them, ignoring them.
I can't
tell you what that does to me. I love this country so much, but I can't imagine
that we would ever leave any of our citizens, any of our brothers and sisters,
to be part of a process that's declaring them hopeless. And that's what's going
on.
PAUL
SOLMAN: A grim assessment for the millions of long-term unemployed still
looking for work in a growing economy.
JEFFREY
BROWN: Online, Geoffrey Weglarz, the man we heard who's gone through
his savings and 401(k), talks more about being a jobless single dad. Plus, Paul
Solman has his take on today's employment report. You will find that on our
Making Sen$e page.
JOBS FIGURES LOOKING GOOD??? OR JUST FOR ILLEGALS???
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/05/jobs-more-discouraged-workers-in-april.html
*
JOBS FIGURES LOOKING GOOD??? OR JUST FOR ILLEGALS???
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/05/jobs-more-discouraged-workers-in-april.html
Obama and Justice
Sotomayor (A LA RAZA PARTY MEMBER) Vow to Illegals to SABOTAGE E-verify!
VIVA LA RAZA
SUPREMACY?
during Obama's first
term, 2/3s of all jobs went to immigrants... BOTH LEGAL and ILLEGAL... and
workplace enforcement of FED LAWS PROHIBTING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS
plummeted 70%!
given Obama was
reelected by LA RAZA, enforcement is expected to be nonexistent.
*
THE SUICIDE of AMERICA and the SURRENDER OF THE
NATION’S
BORDERS, LAWS, JOBS and WELFARE to MEXICO
Suicide rate in middle-aged Americans soars a shocking 28
percent over ten year period
Mexico Orders Hispandering Obama to Mexico to report
why borders are NOT OPEN, Legals are getting jobs that LA RAZA illegals are owed
and why the Mexican welfare state has not expanded fast enough since his
reelection by LA RAZA.
OBAMA HAS EXPLAINED TO MEXICO THAT HE WILL CONTINUE TO
LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT HOMELAND SECURITY, EASE MORE ILLEGALS INTO
AMERICA JOBS, EXPAND DREAM ACTS of WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS, SUE AMERICAN STATES ON
BEHALF OF LA RAZA SUPREMACY and has in fact, just handed millions of illegals
FOOD STAMPS!
POST-ELECTION GIFT TO ILLEGALS: food stamps
OBMAMA’S
LA RAZA WELFARE STATE… plus illegals get all the jobs!
“Since
President Obama came into office, SNAP participation has increased at 10 times
the rate of job creation, the annual spending on SNAP has doubled, and one in
seven Americans now participates in SNAP,”
JUDICIAL WATCH
OBAMA’S SECRET AMNESTY! WHAT WILL IT
COST US?
May 28, 2009
What will
America stand for in 2050?
The US should
think long and hard about the high number of Latino immigrants.
The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are
affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work.
Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190
billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the
labor market at the low-wage end.
AMNESTY = Depressed Wages for Americans,
Poverty for Americas and Jobs and Massive Welfare for Illegals… it’s all about
keeping wages depressed!
THE TRAGEDY of LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT
In America, all jobs go to foreign born
that are either imported or permitted to jump our borders!
OBAMA’S AMERICA… soaring poverty for americans,
soaring welfare and jobs for illegals …and then pass-n-tax the looted middle
class for the real cost of all that “cheap” LA RAZA labor!
THE OBAMA – McCAIN
AMNESTY… EXPECTING 100 MILLION MORE LA RAZA LOOTERS… it’s how we will keep
wages depressed!
“But in the last year or so, there have
been signs of an increase, and now a new poll suggests many Mexicans would come
to the U.S. if they had the chance. And many of them would come illegally if
necessary.”
*
The OBAMA – McCAIN Amnesty Promises NO E-VERIFY enforcement
to Employers and NO BORDER enforcement to LA RAZA invaders.
…isn’t
that what we already have going ????
Dream Act proposals are also a magnet for fraud. Many illegal
immigrants will fraudulently claim they came here as children or that they are
under 30. And the federal government has no way to check whether their claims
are true or not. REP. LAMAR SMITH
"It lets businesses that knowingly
violated the law off the hook," Mr. Krikorian said. "If they were not
withholding payroll taxes, they’re held harmless. If they were violating labor
laws, they’re held harmless. So this is a boon for crooked business."…
MARK KRIKORIAN
“Another force for amnesty is corporate America. Thousands of
businesses have hired illegals in violation of U.S. law. Amnesty for their
illegal workers means, de facto, amnesty for them”… PAT BUCHANAN
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