When I was on unemployment I made $470/week after taxes.
You should check out this article in the NYT about a county in TN that used welfare from the stimulus to create jobs. It’s an interesting concept, offer local businesses free labor in order to expand and grow. I read a follow up to the article that at the end of the program they had cut unemployment in the county from 25% down to 14% and even after the program ended 25% of workers were hired on permanently.
But what’s stopping them from volunteering on their own? And why make it mandatory to do this (which actually makes it NON-voluntary) for every unemployed person, which is the premise?
So…what’s stopping them from doing that? And why is the assumption that making unpaid works hours mandatory is going to cure that?
If you HAVE TO work those unpaid hours then it is no longer VOLUNTEER work! Is that really such a hard concept?
What the unemployed need is PAYING work, a job, a WAGE OR SALARY. They don’t need to be forced to work for free.
Yes, but they CHOOSE to do that. No one is saying “either you work 8 hours unpaid or we cut your money off.” That’s the difference. If the unemployed are required to do work then they should be paid. Anything else is exploitation and involuntary labor because if the work is mandatory it’s NOT volunteer!
Let me make this perfectly clear - I am TOTALLY in favor of the unemployed volunteering but it has to be THEIR choice. If it becomes a requirement it’s NOT volunteer.
The unemployed are the ones in need - they’re in need of a paying job, not a requirement to do unpaid work for someone else.
I don’t see something as “volunteer” when you are required to do it.
No, I’m opposed *forcing *the unemployed to work for free when their greatest need is a paying job. Calling coerced labor “volunteer” doesn’t make it volunteer, nor does it make it OK.
The problem is not a complete lack of jobs, rather, it’s that there are 6 people looking for work for every available job, which means 5/6 of those currently unemployed aren’t going to land a job. That’s why we need more jobs, and they need to be paying jobs.
I saw were you were talking about paying them for the work, and I have no problem with that. I think that would be great because actually earning some money a couple days a week can be an enormous morale boost while you’re looking for better work, as opposed to being completely unemployed.
However, other posters, such as Mgalindo13, ARE talking about making UNpaid labor mandatory for the unemployed. That is what I am objecting to.
Nobody is advocating for making them work for free.
ETA: Nevermind. Just saw your last post. Yes, I object to unpaid work.
Lets be fair here. If they remain unemployed in a region it is either by reasons of conduct they are unemployable or they only possess skills currently unnecessary.
In which state?
The maximum one can make weekly on unemp. in CA is $450.00, based on highest quarter earnings of 11,674.01 and up.
Most receive quite a bit less.
You wouldn’t happen to have anything remotely resembling reputable support for that assertion, would you? (Or did I just get whooshed?)
If you randomly strew resumes to jobs found on job boards, quite true. Of, on the other hand, the five are carefully chosen and researched, and you get to a hiring manager through social or industry connections, then not true. You can’t do a good job applying to 200 openings; you can applying to five.
I’m just not making this up. I’m pretty visible in my field, and you’d think people looking for jobs in it would email me. Almost never happens. One guy I was on a committee with did call me up; I was in the process of helping another manager define a job - this guy got hired almost immediately. I’ve actually got an opening for a new MS or PhD - I trust all such graduates are getting flooded with offers, because I am going to have to call up my faculty friends again to look for someone.
During the Great Depression my dad had a lot of trouble finding work in Memphis. He finally volunteered to work for a place for free. He told them that if he was worth paying at the end of the week, then pay him. If not, he would move on. He was paid and hired.
Sorry for the hijack, but what was your field again? Something to do with CS?
:dubious: No, you aren’t being whooshed. But sounds like you want me to prove there isn’t a trove of unfilled jobs out there that are being denied the public simply out of spite.
I had no idea we’ve gotten to the point on the Dope where the basic law of supply and demand needs a cite.
That is being fair/ That is being wrong. Just ask unemployed board members here how many applications they have filled out.
While you are at it, what skills should they all get?
If there are ten jobs for carpenters and twenty unemployed carpenters only half of them are getting jobs. It has nothing to do with conduct, nor are their skills unnecessary - there is just more labor than demand. It’s that simple.
If there are ten jobs for carpenters and twenty unemployed carpenters only half of them are getting jobs. It has nothing to do with conduct, nor are their skills unnecessary - there is just more labor than demand. It’s that simple.
You just have to consider that the economy added 117,000 jobs last month (supposedly) but there are 14 million completely unemployed people looking for work. That’s roughly 120 job seekers for every available job. Is the idea that 119 out of 120 workers in the US either bad conduct problems or don’t have marketable skills really supportable?
When you add in all the people who are somewhat employed but not employed fulltime even though they want to be, that becomes 427 jobseekers for every job opening. (I’m talking about the U6 number here, currently about 17% or nearly 1 in 6 Americans. That works out to about 50 million)
The notion that all those people are somehow lazy, badly behaving, or don’t have marketable skills is ridiculous.
Perhaps you would feel happier if the unemployed sold their organs to those who have medical coverage. Then they would be useful citizens and not such a drain on you . They just have no reason to live.
And in the year or two you’re acquiring new skills, the job market changes.
Meanwhile, you now have debt on top of unemployment because of the loans you took out to complete the training that now, two years later, is no longer useful.