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I have been on unemployment benefits for over a year and have submitted resumes and filled out online applications nearly every day. Only two interviews. Once they saw I was old they cut the discussion short.
My identity on this board is "I'm retired now," but I would love to change it to 'I am working now."
If you are over 50, college educated and used to make good money in a professional office setting, then you are never going to be hired in low wage jobs, too many younger applicants who fit their needs.
If you are out of work for a long time you are unwanted and if you are older than 50 you have to be really lucky to get a job that pays more than $40K. Employers want people on their way up, not on their way down.
As many have noted unemployment benefits can often discourage employment.
My neighbor was out of work for years (knowing how to suspend and resume benefits) and would evaluate jobs based upon the compensation over state programs (he had unemployment and health). He once made the statement that he saw no reason to get up early and commute for an extra $20,000 a year.
There are more people than jobs, many of the jobs that are being created kind of suck (even here in the bay area, half of all new jobs are minimum wage), and this trend is only getting worse.
This isn't likely to change because automation and efficiency gains ameliorate the need for hiring in many fields (and these fields are increasingly ones that have decent jobs).
The solution is obvious, simple, and entirely feasible - work less. However, we have an arbitrary and silly belief that everyone needs to work - a lot.
This is something rather foreign to me and my wife, but we recognize that it exists.
My wife and I were both military brats, and I enjoyed a long military career. Until our present location after my military retirement, we never lived anywhere longer than three years, and we never moved anywhere that we didn't know when we got there when we were leaving. My great-great grandfather was a Westward pioneer, and my great-grandfather started the family into its historical tradition of military service when he joined the Army for the Spanish-American war.
My wife and I circled the world as kids, and we've circled the world a couple more times as a couple. We're still amazed when we meet middle-aged people here who have lived nowhere else in their entire lives.
During the Hurricane Katrina crisis, we noted that for so many people, the idea of moving from their homes was simply unthinkable. For us...heck, we kept mobility bags packed for most of our lives.
We're in the process of relocating right now--taking a higher paying job in Dallas--and we have neighbors who are amazed that we don't need psychological therapy to handle it. Frankly, we've been here ten years and had gotten antsy anyway.
My point is that we recognize that for some people, moving is somehow gut-wrenching even if we don't feel the same way.
There are more people than you'd imagine who end up condemning themselves into unemployment, underemployment, and poverty due to an unwillingness to move. I've read somewhere that between 40%-50% of people never live outside their birth state. Some areas have net in-migration, but this is often due to retirees relocating. A stagnant pool of people or lots of elderly moving in is a surefire way to get economic stagnation.
Most people can figure out that if things aren't working in place "A," then maybe I should go try place "B," and oftentimes there are rational explanations for NOT moving, but there are also many irrational reasons. My parents had education degrees and were never able to put them to use in the early 80s in the local company. By the early 90s, my parents had secured teaching jobs at a less than optimal town in South Carolina, but my maternal grandparents badgered and guilt-tripped them until they moved back, and as I've aged my parents are doing the same to me. They never got another teaching position and their financial health leading into retirement age is not good. If my parents can retire, it's going to be a very tough retirement, and I really wonder "what if" they had kept that teaching position in small town SC and maybe moved to Columbia, Greenville, or Charleston once they were more familiar with the area. Would they have pensions and positive net worth, something to fall back onto as they age?
Emotional, irrational, or stubborn financial and professional decision making often leads to catastrophic consequences.
I wonder what the careers were of all these people that had great jobs but lost them and can't get back into the workforce.
If you have a valuable skill, you're in demand. If you don't, you're not.
The world still has to function, and if you're not a cog in the mechanism that makes that happen, then guess what...
Otherwise, if you are, then it's your job to market your abilities better than the rest and be that replacement. If this is not happening, at least some of the fault lies in your previous choices or your current actions.
I wonder what the careers were of all these people that had great jobs but lost them and can't get back into the workforce.
If you have a valuable skill, you're in demand. If you don't, you're not.
The world still has to function, and if you're not a cog in the mechanism that makes that happen, then guess what...
Otherwise, if you are, then it's your job to market your abilities better than the rest and be that replacement. If this is not happening, at least some of the fault lies in your previous choices or your current actions.
Age is a major factor--many (if not most) companies don't want to hire older techncians simply because they're old and there are plenty of kids...or temps...available with the same skills.
I had a relative who wanted to move to a city with jobs. ROADBLOCKS:
The bias towards local candidates
Expense of driving or flying to the target city for many fruitless interviews
If you attempt to move to a town with jobs most apartments will not rent to people without jobs
I had a relative who wanted to move to a city with jobs. ROADBLOCKS:
The bias towards local candidates
Expense of driving or flying to the target city for many fruitless interviews
If you attempt to move to a town with jobs most apartments will not rent to people without jobs
Then you get around those roadblocks.
Regarding expenses - That's the reason why they should be open to relocating even when they have a job, so they have the income to afford those expenses as well as the time to entertain only those opportunities that are solid. It gets harder once you've lost your job and are burning cash.
Age is a major factor--many (if not most) companies don't want to hire older techncians simply because they're old and there are plenty of kids...or temps...available with the same skills.
Regarding the IT industry, if I wanted someone to build me a fully redundant Exchange email infrastructure that can support thousands of users securely, I wouldn't be hiring a kid out of college to be doing it. There are just some things you can't learn in college that years of experience specializing in something brings to the table, and that is foresight.
It's often why consulting and contracting are very successful in the technology sector. It is these people's jobs to do something specialized and do it well, if they want to make any business.
Sure, you can hire a newbie for things like desktop support or help desk and pay him a measly salary, but you can't do the same for a job that requires the analysis, planning and implementation of systems that have to meet the demands of supporting a business, and be able to do it quickly and on a budget.
I say all that to say, if a person wants to make sure they become an indispensable asset, they have to choose professions that favor experience, relevance, and quality of work. Not youth.
It's useless for someone to complain that they got fired at their life-long job as a heavy box lifter and replaced by a youngster with better muscles, to use an extreme analogy.
The fault is obvious. Just never to the person that made the bad decision in the first place, unfortunately.
And if someone chooses a profession that they can not adapt to and excel at as it changes, then it is through no one else's fault but their own. We adapt to life, not the other way around.
Last edited by Soup Sandwich; 12-11-2013 at 10:44 AM..
I had a relative who wanted to move to a city with jobs. ROADBLOCKS:
The bias towards local candidates
Expense of driving or flying to the target city for many fruitless interviews
If you attempt to move to a town with jobs most apartments will not rent to people without jobs
Also the rental part, if you are flexible. You can sublease an apartment in a major city or rent a room as there usually do not check for employment.
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