The Atlantic: Alana Semuels: A Better Way to Help The Long-Term Unemployed

Source:The New Democrat

There are people on public assistance who didn’t even finish high school and now are single parents generally mothers who have very little if any job experience even at low-skilled low-income jobs. Some of these people even have a drug problem either with alcohol or illegal drugs. This is probably the hardest population to help people on Welfare. The only harder population as far as moving people off of Welfare to the workforce with a good job would be people who are disabled and even learning disabled to go along with all their other issues.

But then we have a population of unemployed workers who have been much better with their lives and have lived responsibly for most of their adult lives. Finished high school while they were in high school and even have a college or vocational degree or at least a community college degree. But have been laid off during bad turn in the economy and are not old yet and even not even fifty yet, but lets say are in their forties and have positive work experience that goes back twenty-years or more in a field that they were trained for. But now can’t find another job in that field. Those employers are going for younger cheaper employees, or those jobs simply no longer exist.

The educated unemployed are the easiest people to help and move off unemployment. Because they are responsible adults who are nowhere near retirement who want to work because they have responsibilities to meet and they actually like working. And simply need a good job to make that happen for them. For people who fit this group of unemployment they should be back in school. Government should help them with the finances for them to go back to school. And either get more skills in their current field. Or learn another trade and work there. This would be major and great investment in human capital that would eventually pay for itself.

It is not everyday, every week, every month or even every year that I agree with Newt Gingrich on anything. But he made this point when he ran for president back in 2011-12 that the amount of time that people who are long-term unemployed who were laid off spend not finding another job, they could be using that time to further their education. That you could extend their Unemployment Insurance, but in it would be a requirement that they further their education. Either at work seminar or a community college and they would have a much better opportunity of finding a good job. Which is something we should’ve been doing as a country ever since the Great Recession hit back in 2008.