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Overcoming The Image Problem of the Long-Term Unemployed

There are 5.5 million long-term unemployed in our country today, about the size of the population of Oregon. The share of long-term unemployed, as a percentage of all unemployed is about 42%. It topped 40% in December, 2009 for the first time since 1948 and has remained above that level ever since. Workers age 50 and older are over represented in the total number of long-term unemployed. The Federal Government defines being long-term unemployed as being without a job for six months or longer, but the reality is that many in this group haven’t worked for a year or longer.

The core problem behind long-term joblessness is an economy that’s growing too slowly to absorb so many left unemployed following the downturn. The shortfall in jobs, the so called “jobs hole” is currently 10.5 million people (5.6 million due to jobs lost since 2007 and 4.9 million jobs not created to meet growth in the working-age population). The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has noted that the increase in long-term unemployment is due primarily to “the severe and persistent weakness in the aggregate demand for labor.” The number of job seekers to job openings was 4-to-1 in December, 2011. Indeed, given the enormous amount of slack in today’s labor market, employers certainly can afford to be choosy as they want to be.

But a secondary problem has to do with how workers, who have been out of work for awhile, are perceived by potential employers, regardless of whether their skills have declined much or not. The perception problem of employability of the long-term unemployed has always been with us. We’ve all heard the saying “you need a job to get a job”, but I believe that the perception problem has never been more prevalent in the modern era than it is today simply because there have never been so many long-term unemployed since the Great Depression. Today’s world economy, driven by technology, globalization, fast growing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries, and three decades of aggressive de-regulation is fast moving indeed, and workers who do not maintain their ability to add value in the economy (often at an accelerated pace) will be quickly left behind. But long-term unemployment became a big problem as soon as the downturn began in 2007, which suggests that it isn’t largely “structural” in nature.

And what is it about the unemployed job applicant that potential employers are perceiving? Well, employers tend to pay close attention to the cost of a bad hire and are typically quite risk adverse when it comes to decisions about their “human capital,” sometimes even more so than with business decisions involving their monetary “investment capital.”

One common employer perception about previously well-paid, but long-term unemployed professionals is that they won't take lower paying jobs — and if they do, they’ll bolt as soon as they find a higher paying one. Another perception is that people who have been unemployed for awhile are low-quality workers due to skills decline and low self-confidence. In the employer’s mind, there’s probably a good reason other than a slow economy for a person to be unemployed--such as laziness. Why were they the one who was laid off when there were cuts?

Social psychology researchers at UCLA and SUNY/Stony Brook completed an amazing study last year on sigma of the unemployed http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7nh039h1 and found that that even when there’s no evidence of skills decline, out-of-work job applicants are still at a disadvantage because of stigma, as they are perceived as possessing less competence and warmth, which are dimensions theorized to be central and universal in social judgment.

So, the problem here is that employers can hold negative associations about unemployed applicants--especially the long-term unemployed--and this can lead to discrimination. Employed workers are typically seen by employers as more attractive than unemployed ones, and current employment can be used inappropriately (and with bad consequences) by an employer as a proxy to assess an applicant’s employability. But if it isn’t just the job applicant’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and professional references that are evaluated to objectively verify qualification for a job opening, a bias problem may result that denies an equal employment opportunity. We all pay indirectly for this sort of limiting approach to staffing with an economy that doesn’t grow as fast as it otherwise would. It’s possible that along with the large shortfall in available jobs, stigma is a big contributing factor in the level of long-term unemployment.

Discrimination against the unemployed remains legal in most jurisdictions but bills have been introduced in 17 states and cities over the past year that either ban ads that are discriminatory towards unemployed job seekers or that ban hiring considerations based on an applicant's status as employed or unemployed. On March 6, 2012 the D.C. City Council unanimously passed the District of Columbia Unemployed Anti-Discrimination Act of 2012. Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber signed Senate Bill 1548 into law on March 27th which makes it unlawful for employers and employment agencies in that state to publish ads that discriminate towards unemployed job seekers. New Jersey, the first state in the the nation to enact one, has had such a law in place since 2011. While discrimination in hiring is typically difficult to prove, this doesn’t mean that it should be allowed, and I think that prohibiting unemployment discrimination under law is a move in the right direction towards making it a universally unacceptable employment practice.

Putting political arguments about how and whether it should be done aside, I’m of the opinion that we must do everything we can as a society to help the long-term jobless return to the workforce. Otherwise, we’re essentially saying “we can’t be bothered, you’re on your own.” At a time of sharply growing income inequality, poverty, and social dislocation, our country can ill afford to leave them behind, trapped, in a poor quality of life.

Better information about the problem is also important. It’s entirely possible that many otherwise informed, concerned individuals who never lost their job during the downturn and its wake don’t sufficiently understand the full dimensions of the problem: it’s like with any situation in life--unless you personally experience it, the situation may well remain a mental abstraction.
Here are some thoughts on what the unemployed can do to help overcome their image problem.

They can:

Be informed--maintain skills to the greatest extent possible and follow developments in their field very closely.

Be proactive--volunteer in their field and showcase what they know through blogging and other methods.

Be political--a transition between jobs can allow for more time for civic engagement to push for the things that matter, including doing more about high unemployment. Working with others is an additional way to prevent social isolation.

And employers can:

Be careful--avoid biased assumptions of job applicants’ current skills. Carefully check what the skills really are when recruiting for all positions. Acknowledge up front that job applicants are evaluated neutrally with respect to employment status and be able to prove it.

Be open-minded--consider being innovative and diverse when recruiting. This often means looking broadly for job candidates, some of whom my not happen to be working at the moment.

Be collaborative--Reach out to the long-term unemployed to determine mutually beneficial ways that can help the organization achieve its goals or mission.