# The Long Term Unemployed are Doomed **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 11, 2013, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101 "2013-12-11T20:17:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/21 "2013-12-12T00:31:20Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I review resumes on occasion. I won’t consider hiring someone if it is evident they’ve been living on unemployment for more than three months. What makes that evident? I mean, my savings lasted close to a year, but I haven’t put “Lived off savings, not unemployment!” on my resume. ---
**Author:** ![Cyros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a698b9/32.png) [@Cyros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyros)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/22 "2013-12-12T00:52:23Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I review resumes on occasion. I won’t consider hiring someone if it is evident they’ve been living on unemployment for more than three months. And I would hesitate to hire someone who is willing to give up the equivalent of $12 per hour for a $10 per hour job as I believe it show poor decision making as they are not only giving up a couple bucks an hour of straight pay but are also paying an opportunity cost in giving up time that could be spent looking for a job which is a better fit. I just don’t get the stigma associated with unemployment insurance. We don’t fault people for taking full advantage of health or auto insurance. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/23 "2013-12-12T01:06:45Z")
> [@Jesse\_Pinkman](#): > > IIRC, other countries were having success with providing tax incentives for those who hire the long-term unemployed. This would never fly in the US, but it’s something to think about. How is this supposed to help? all it does is reverse the problem. ---
**Author:** ![smokey78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@smokey78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smokey78)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/24 "2013-12-12T01:12:24Z")
I found it a miracle I found a full-time gig this year after working almost 3 yrs part-time as in, doing 3 job gigs that TOTALED 24hrs a week. It helped that I was a pharmacist and therefore the applicant pool being smaller. (as in 120 applications versus the 700 applications for techs for openings) I am not sure how other occupations are doing it, but I met two pharmacists who were stay-at-home moms for 12 and 16 years straight w/o working. They were able to find jobs on the basis that registered pharmacists were hard to come by (well those who would work part-time) They told me if they had to do it all over again, that they could at least have found part-time gigs as supplemental income while raising their kids. ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/25 "2013-12-12T01:56:17Z")
> [@AdmiralQ](#): > > When I hire, I definitely prefer someone who has worked recently, in any job, over someone with similar (or even greater) qualifications than someone who hasn’t worked in 6 months or longer. One thing a resume doesn’t show well is someone’s drive and willingness to work hard. I think anyone would prefer someone who takes any job at all - McDonald’s, Wal Mart, or any retail or service industry position - over someone who sat at home milking their unemployment until it ran out. > > From experience, those that are unwilling to take a job “beneath them” and remain unemployed until they find a job in their preferred field are nearly always worse hires than those that are willing to work any job as long as they get a paycheck. Those that hold out nearly always end up being lazier, less driven, and overall worse employees. This makes zero sense to me. What about the people who are actually fiscally responsible, and who have 1) saved up enough that they have a multiple-month cushion so they can concentrate full-time on the job search or 2) worked out a system with their spouse that they can live for a long time on one paycheck or 3) a combination of both? You’re weeding those people out as well, and they might well be the most driven and better employees. ---
**Author:** ![Sarabellum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarabellum/32/3492_2.png) [@Sarabellum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarabellum)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/26 "2013-12-12T02:12:57Z")
What about just getting a business bank account and a DBA (doing business as) for your “company” and say you were self-employed for however long you were unemployed? I mean, it’s not technically a lie, even if your little shell company wasn’t actually paying you, you did OWN the whole thing, right? If you managed to land a freelance gig or two to create some references, all the better. That might help take the stink out of a long unemployment stretch, wouldn’t it? Am I being terribly unethical? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/27 "2013-12-12T02:19:35Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > I feel like this has been pretty common knowledge for awhile. If you’re unemployed for a long time you get the “stink” on you and employers wonder why nobody else will hire you, and don’t want to be the suckers that do. It’s been pretty common knowledge for [at least the last three years](http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/16/news/economy/unemployed_need_not_apply/). ---
**Author:** ![Bam\_Boo\_Gut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8c91f0/32.png) [@Bam\_Boo\_Gut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bam_Boo_Gut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/28 "2013-12-12T02:27:22Z")
I tell you what I found terrifying about not working. When I finally found a full time job I found I was struggling to write! I had a ledger I have to fill in longhand and boy did I stumble. My brain was going faster than my hands, mistakes all over the place - I appeared to be barely literate. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/29 "2013-12-12T02:29:43Z")
> [@Sarabellum1976](#): > > What about just getting a business bank account and a DBA (doing business as) for your “company” and say you were self-employed for however long you were unemployed? > > I mean, it’s not technically a lie, even if your little shell company wasn’t actually paying you, you did OWN the whole thing, right? > > If you managed to land a freelance gig or two to create some references, all the better. > > That might help take the stink out of a long unemployment stretch, wouldn’t it? Am I being terribly unethical? No, its what many IT people and project managers do when they get laid off. Or they register with a consulting firm - they aren’t always “placed” but by registering and getting on their roster they have an “employer.” Your resume says something like June 2011 - present Consultant - Very Small Boutique Consulting Company - various clients. Hopefully, they will be able to throw some work your way so when asked, you can talk about your various clients instead of saying “business was really slow, so I learned Clojure.” (If business is very slow, do SOMETHING other than watch old episodes of the Rockford Files while sending out resumes.) ---
**Author:** ![Jesse\_Pinkman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@Jesse\_Pinkman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jesse_Pinkman)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/30 "2013-12-12T02:41:41Z")
Also, a friend of mine had success volunteering in between jobs after he got laid off. From my experience, if you’re hit with unexpected job loss, most people won’t hold it against you as long is you’re doing _something_ in the interim besides sit on your ass and collect unemployment. The long - term unemployment response rate is ultimately caused by automated HR systems that drop resumes automatically based on certain criteria, so if you can fill that void on your resume with anything at all, you’ll be fine. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/31 "2013-12-12T03:08:32Z")
> [@AdmiralQ](#): > > From experience, those that are unwilling to take a job “beneath them” and remain unemployed until they find a job in their preferred field are nearly always worse hires than those that are willing to work any job as long as they get a paycheck. Those that hold out nearly always end up being lazier, less driven, and overall worse employees. I graduated college in 1989, and have been employed full-time, in a full- time degree program, or some combination of those ever since. The longest I’ve ever been between jobs is less than 3 weeks (knock wood). But if I lost my job, I wouldn’t be able to do the vast majority of retail or service jobs because I have a bum ankle and simply cannot spend long periods on my feet. Doesn’t make me lazy to have physical limitations. I simply have no cartilage in my left ankle, so certain jobs are just not going to be a good fit. ---
**Author:** ![moejoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@moejoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moejoe)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/32 "2013-12-12T03:20:48Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > The thread in the Pit got me wondering about when it makes sense for a person to continue having hope they’ll get a “real” job and when it makes sense for them to throw in the towel and start practicing folding t-shirts. > > The six month mark seems to be that inflection point. > > Any kind of full-time work is going to impede someone’s ability to job search. Especially in a typical minimum-wage position. So telling a person to take a job, any job, is not always good advice. I mean, it’s good advice if you were already making minimum wage or if you’re literally down to your last penny. \*\*But it’s stupid advice for someone who had a “good” job and could get another “good” job with just a few weeks of focused job searching. \*\* > > If I were running things, I would allow people to take unemployment benefits for at least six months, whether they were working or not (as long as their income was significantly less than what they were making in their old job.) This would allow people to make some extra money without penalizing them for it AND it would also allow them to avoid the taint of long-term unemployment. An individual could take the night shift stocking shelves at Target and during the day send out resumes and go on interviews. He’d have six months to find a “real” job, with extensions built-in whenever the job market craps out to a certain point. > > Of course, then people would then have to contend with the bias against job candidates who have “Ran the register at Taco Bell for four months” on their resumes. The same businesses that have a problem with the long-term unemployed will have a problem with “take a job, any job” candidates too. Bolding mine, I’m thinking if they could get another good job with just a few weeks of focused searching they would have done so during the first few weeks of unemployment, right? The problem is people who think the financial cost of a lower paying job is greater than the resume cost of being a holdout. Most low wage jobs are part time anyway, which does leave room for focused job searching and interviewing. The part time gig plus the small unemployment will probably be enough to skate by for a short while, and it sounds like a much better plan than refusing the low wage gig until you’re pulling coins out of the couch 6 months later. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/33 "2013-12-12T03:34:30Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > Have you seen how many new businesses fail? Not only does it take resources that are probably not available/scarce but it destroys what little there was. > Relatively few have the skills, knowledge or “talent” to run a business. I think actualliberalnotoneofthose’s qualification in #3 was meant to imply that #2 really means to make a show of being self-employed, ala CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet and The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything. You make up business cards, stationery, a basic website, maybe file legal paperwork to have a real company registration, then you sit on your ass and do nothing for six months except call your sister once a month and remind her to check the smoke detectors, and then claim you spent the past six months as the CEO of Robert Columbia Consulting, Inc. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/34 "2013-12-12T03:48:54Z")
> [@Sarabellum1976](#): > > What about just getting a business bank account and a DBA (doing business as) for your “company” and say you were self-employed for however long you were unemployed? > > I mean, it’s not technically a lie, even if your little shell company wasn’t actually paying you, you did OWN the whole thing, right? > > If you managed to land a freelance gig or two to create some references, all the better. > > That might help take the stink out of a long unemployment stretch, wouldn’t it? Am I being terribly unethical? I’ve known a few IT guys who have registered their own company. What they do is apply for jobs and then ask to be paid via 1099 to their company. Then, they, as the sole owner of their company, can pay themselves whatever they want out of that. If they get laid off, then they continue “working” for their own company doing “business development” and “marketing” as they look for another job. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/35 "2013-12-12T03:55:43Z")
> [@Macca26](#): > > Well, that’s great, but when Target, Walmart, and the rest of them look at your college-educated resume and say “Overqualified! Next please.” it becomes rather hard to take whatever job you can get. They always say that we’ll be bored, that we’ll be underpaid, and that we’ll move on to greener pastures as soon as we can because of this…Regardless, it’s difficult to convince them that we really don’t care how boring or awful it is, we need money. This is one of the reasons that I’m in favor of more objective examination-based hiring practices. E.g. instead of going through interviews that are very subjective, you could take the Target Customer Service Representative Aptitude Test and it wouldn’t matter if you had a PhD in Astrophysics, if you scored high enough you would probably get in. Interviews, reference checks, and background checks would be restricted to basic, barebones screening activities to make sure you didn’t have cave-man manners or lack required professional licensure (if required by the government for the job). Maybe you could get additional “points” for degrees and be docked points for a criminal record, but in the end you would get a “score” that was compared with other candidates rather than some manager’s opinion that, “Oh, I don’t think he’s suitable. What are you doing for lunch?” ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/36 "2013-12-12T04:04:01Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > This is one of the reasons that I’m in favor of more objective examination-based hiring practices. E.g. instead of going through interviews that are very subjective, you could take the Target Customer Service Representative Aptitude Test and it wouldn’t matter if you had a PhD in Astrophysics, if you scored high enough you would probably get in. Interviews, reference checks, and background checks would be restricted to basic, barebones screening activities to make sure you didn’t have cave-man manners or lack required professional licensure (if required by the government for the job). Maybe you could get additional “points” for degrees and be docked points for a criminal record, but in the end you would get a “score” that was compared with other candidates rather than some manager’s opinion that, “Oh, I don’t think he’s suitable. What are you doing for lunch?” This sounds good until you find yourself with 5000 applicants with the exact same score. What do you do then? ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101/37 "2013-12-12T04:16:58Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > This sounds good until you find yourself with 5000 applicants with the exact same score. What do you do then? 1. Make the test longer. More questions generally leads to fewer score collisions. E.g. a 1000 question test will probably have fewer people with the exact same score than a 10 question test. 2. Make going through the test more onerous, involved, or lengthy to reduce the number of applicants. E.g. the exam is only given in this small town in West Virginia, meaning everyone outside the area has to _really_ want the job enough to be willing to take the effort to travel all that way to take the test. Require that the exam be given in three different sections with each section given a month after the previous one. People who were applying on a lark are less likely to want slug through three 5-hour exam sessions over three months. 3. Add near-continuously measured items to the test. E.g. for a position stocking shelves at Target, you could have an item on the test be a timed simulation where the candidate has to stock a shelf. If they don’t finish in 10 minutes with fewer than 5 errors, they get zero points. If they do, they get 10 basic points and then additional points, _measured to the hundredth of a point_, for the amount of time they had remaining until the deadline (gotta love employees who get the job done early!). You could even add on points for making fewer than the expected/allowed 5 errors (candidate likely to exceed expectations!). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-long-term-unemployed-are-doomed/676101.md?page=1)