BENTLY: Ending the sentence of unemployed for life - Washington Times

BENTLY: Ending the sentence of unemployed for life - Washington Times


The simple pleasures of summer have been overshadowed this year by crushing institutional despair as too many Americans are sentenced to life without meaningful employment.

The monthly job reports have taken on the tone of a parole board hearing in which the dismal fates of millions are laid out in bleak numbers. The stagnant unemployment number of 8.2 percent ignores those sentenced so long to joblessness that they have become unemployment lifers. Also ignored is the fact that not enough jobs are being created to accommodate new workers, those fresh-faced graduates ready to take their place in the world. With the Federal Reserve predicting no real change until 2014, if then, the data bear a closer look.

The Hill newspaper reports that until recently, the highest percentage of long-term unemployed workers was 26 percent in the 1980s. Compare that to a peak of 46 percent during the most recent downturn, and currently about 43 percent, according to the latest Labor Department figures.

Further breaking down the numbers, of 12.7 million unemployed, 5.4 million have been out of work for at least six months. Of those, about 33 percent have suffered without work for a year or longer. That stands in stark contrast to data from before the beginning of the recession, in December 2007, when just 17.5 percent of the unemployed were out of work for six months or longer.

Bearing the brunt of this is the next generation. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned recently that 14.8 percent of young people ages 15 to 24 in the United States are neither employed nor in school or training programs.