Whose Unemployed?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Whose Unemployed?
26
Wed, 02-11-2004 - 12:42pm
The highly educated are the latest victims of the weak recovery

The weak recovery has led to dramatic increases in long-term unemployment—workers searching for jobs who remain unemployed for 27 or more weeks. Increasingly, it is the most highly educated Americans who are victims of the rise in long-term unemployment.

The figure below shows the percentage increases in long-term unemployment from 2000 to 2003 among people of different education levels. Overall unemployment also increased over the same period, rising from 5.7 million in 2000 to 8.8 million in 2003. The annual level of long-term unemployment was 649,119 in 2000; by 2003, this number had risen to 1.9 million.

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Both the increase in overall unemployment and the increase in the number of long-term unemployed have differed by education level. Total unemployment has increased 40%, 74%, and 95%, respectively, for workers with a high school degree or less, some college education, and a bachelor's degree or more. But long-term unemployment has increased at much greater rates—156%, 259%, and 299% for each educational group, respectively.

In all recessions, the least educated have suffered disproportionately. However, the current recession and weak recovery are unique in the extent to which workers with substantial education are also economic victims.

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Sat, 02-14-2004 - 9:55am

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 02-14-2004 - 1:20pm
To me, this is a form of discrimination..
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 02-14-2004 - 1:21pm
I agree with everything and have posted on this before.

I think I may have even posted the statistics on the malpractice insurance premiums.....

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2003
Sat, 02-14-2004 - 4:31pm
on a random side note: a few years back there was an article in the paper about a man who sued a police dept (or maybe the state?) in Mass because he got denied a job as a police officer. turns out he scored 'too high' on the test and their experience has been that more intelligent people tend to get bored easily in these positions and leave, so they waste a lot of money training and hiring people whose iq's are higher than their preferred maximum.

seems kind of silly, but the judge bought it and he lost the case.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 02-14-2004 - 7:09pm
I remember that story.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-12-2004
Fri, 02-20-2004 - 12:12pm
I can relate. While I was looking for work, there were jobs that were not even worth considering--what's the point in working if all (or the vast majority) of the money goes to daycare? Also, even if I had taken a minimum-wage or other extremely low paying job, my husband and I would still make too much on paper to qualify for any government programs (which we'd rather not go on anyway)--I say "on paper" because of my husband's child-support payments for his daughter and a garnishment from a debt incurred long before I even knew him, which brings his take-home pay to barely over $700 a month. Not wanting to take extremely low-paying jobs or part-time work does not always have anything to do with being "too good" to work or otherwise having a poor work ethic, it is often impractical.

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