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A Tale of Two Countries
theodp writes "Over at TechCrunch, Jon Bischke is troubled by the growing divide between Silicon Valley and unemployed America. While people who spend most of their days within a few blocks of tech start-up epicenters are enjoying a boom/bubble, the number of unemployed now eclipses 14 million nationwide, labor under-utilization is 16.2%, and the mean duration of unemployment has spiked to 40 weeks. 'Which bring us to an important question,' writes Bischke. 'Should Silicon Valley (and other tech clusters throughout the country) care? After all, as long as people in Nebraska or the Central Valley of California have enough money to buy virtual tractors to tend their crops in Farmville, should the tech community be worried about whether those same people are getting paid to do work in the real world? Is what's best for Silicon Valley also good for America?'"
look, no offense.
but a lot of people whose life is a never ending string of relatively well paying jobs, "interesting" work, conferences, tech seminars, etc, tend to lose their ability to empathize with the rest of us losers.
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
U-6 jumped a full point from 15.4 in May to 16.4 in June.
It's way too easy to remain unemployed.
My friend's unemployment check is $347/wk. He's already filed for and received "Emergency Unemployment Compensation" which extends his benefits for up to a year. His only requirement to remain on unemployment is that he has to "make and active job search" meaning 3 job-searching activities (job fairs, interviews, etc.) or 3 job applications, or any combination per week. Job applications includes applying online to jobs via the state's unemployment office.
And $347wk covers all his bills, so why should he look for a job? Yet he counts as unemployed.
It's just our government messing up its own programs and making things appear worse than they should be.