“I’ve been asking CEOs to give more long-term unemployed workers a fair shot at that new job and new chance to support their families,” President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address. “This week, many will come to the White House to make that commitment real.”
More than 300 companies signed a pledge that they wouldn’t avoid hiring anyone just because of a long jobless spell. Studies have shown that long-term unemployment has become its own obstacle to getting hired.
In June, the Labor Department announced Thursday, there were 3.1 million Americans out of work six months or longer, down 293,000 from May and a million from this time last year — but still a historically unprecedented number. When Congress let long-term unemployment insurance die in December, it left the federal government with no policy that specifically targets the problem of prolonged joblessness.
Administration officials never said the business pledge would fill that gap and meaningfully reduce long-term joblessness; they just suggested it couldn’t hurt.
So what’s up with the pledge lately? Not a whole lot — though the administration says it’s a work in progress. HuffPost asked White House economic adviser Betsey Stevenson about the effort during a recent Capitol Hill event on long-term unemployment. [ … ]
Read the rest at HuffPo by clicking here.
Blogger’s comment:
This is a far more “truthy” look at long-term unemployment and the extent of the damage done by the congressional GOP’s obstruction.
Without a functioning Congress that enacts budgets and works hand in hand with the President on economic policy, what we get is drift. Were it not for the Fed, we would be in a Depression right now. The brutality comes in when you factor in the pulling away of the safety net on millions.
That companies are hiring people part-time, at salaries that are less than what they are worth is nothing to rejoice at. Then again, no hiring would be far worse.
I don’t see this as a reflection of our president’s performance, mind you, but, rather, a measure of just how brutal the fight for Democracy has been and how brutal it will continue to be, barring voter awakening.
Nuff said, for now
Curated from www.huffingtonpost.com