The official unemployment rate has been above 9% starting in May 2009. This last month’s rate was at 9.8%. Most people say that the real unemployment rate is 18%.
The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work. Recently 60 Minutes featured a story of people in Silicon Valley (that is the San Jose California area) that have been out of work for 99 weeks or are approaching that number. All had at least a Bachelors degree and many had advanced degrees. They were at least 40 years old. Over 40 percent of the unemployed — more than 6 million Americans — have been out of work for than six months or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the age of 60 I landed the best job of my life. The president of the company asked me in an interview if I had any grandchildren. I thought hum what kind of question is this. I answered “NO”, which is still an accurate answer, but in my mind I thought this is one job I am not going to get.
I was fortunate that time but obtaining that job occurred after 15 months of unemployment. The fact is that there is age discrimination. Many older people will either take a much lower paying job or they will remain unemployed indefinitely. The United States has now created a new class of people and no one knows how to prevent them from standing in bread lines. This is a sad tale for what was the world’s economic power house.
Based upon what I have heard and read, no one knows how to fix this problem.
Perhaps the Republicans do know how to solve this problem. Clearly the Democrats do not. If the economy does not improve significantly by November 2012, I will not be voting for Barack Obama and it is a good bet that most of America won’t either.
Coast Contact 