What The Next Election Will Be About

[Annie]

Not even mentioned in the article is the vast number of 'underemployed.' Those that are working to mitigate or avoid unemployment, oftentimes for less than they'd receive with Unemployment Compensation, in order to not carry the negatives of 'long-time' unemployed.

RealClearPolitics - An Unemployment Catastrophe

June 10, 2011
An Unemployment Catastrophe
By Rich Lowry

Pres. Barack Obama is given to cute vehicular metaphors about the state of the economy. We were "in a ditch," then got out and hit a "bump in the road." This is studiously folksy. It also vastly understates the nature of our situation.

President Obama is presiding over an unspooling social catastrophe in the form of unemployment, and especially long-term unemployment. For all those people who are chronically unemployed, it's as if they have been hit by the proverbial car and then backed over by it again and again.

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The job market is now segregated by levels of educational attainment, but long-term joblessness disregards schooling. Once they are unemployed, about 30 percent of college graduates, high-school graduates, and high-school dropouts are out of a job for more than a year. It doesn't matter what sector of the economy they come from. "More than 20 percent of unemployed workers in every non-agricultural industry," Pew writes, "have been out of work for a year or more."

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