Long term unemployment is not so much a reflection of your skills, attitude, and abilities. It’s more a reflection that human labor is being hollowed out.
Digby Jones
Activist Post
I’m still fairly young, and feeling very fortunate to have formal employment which covers my necessary expenses, with some leftover money to spare for rainy days. That is on top of being a small-time online entrepreneur, which can (hopefully) allow me to live someplace warm and modestly priced in Latin America someday. Just work online and live a simpler life which is true to myself (no car or commute is necessary!) and clearly removed from the toxic culture landscape of U.S. strip malls, poisonous food, and anti-productive social policies.
But what about the tens of millions of Americans who are not anywhere close to having my fortunate circumstances? Long term unemployment (or underemployment) is a major issue for those who are stuck in the American vortex, with seemingly no options to escape. Unfortunately, I have some bad news for many of these people. Are you ready to swallow the red pill?
Long Term Unemployment Part I: You Are Becoming Irrelevant
You are a pest. A menace. A hopeless smartphone and pornography addicted zombie who lives in “your mothers basement”. You are a non-productive “useless eater” who represents part of that 6.7 billion people who need to disappear from this Earth, in order to achieve true harmony and balance with nature again (according to those spooky Georgia Guidestones).
These are not my own personal opinions about you. No, these are the opinions of grumpy taxpayers, the mainstream media, political and business elites, and/or sinister third parties which may or may not exist. They see you only as a taker, a moocher, and a “gibs me dat” type of person. A person who just doesn’t want to work or contribute to society.
However, the “get a job” naysayers simply cannot comprehend the truth about the rapid changes in our civilization. There are currently more people alive today than at any point in human history (roughly 7.2 billion as of 2014) and yet the need for human labor is being scrapped at such an unprecedented rate.
Outsourcing, automation, robotics, drone deliveries, smartphone apps, self-service checkouts etc. It’s all contributing to less need for paid labor and, therefore, permanently high unemployment rates. But if technology is supposed to make our lives better and yet we live in a for-profit capitalist economic system, where is the wealth generation (for the masses) supposed to come from?
Long Term Unemployment Part II: No More Entry-Level Work
Let me spell it out for you, all you clueless individuals who have never been affected by long term unemployment. How can the unemployed (or new to the workforce) get work when they are not even given the chance??
You can drop your standards to rock bottom (minimum wage and part time hours) right away – and what will you get from the H.R. department for experienced job seekers? “Aren’t you overqualified for this? Won’t you just leave the minute a better job comes around?”
Or here’s another one. You can drop your standards to rock bottom (minimum wage and part time hours) and you will find is that even for the most simplistic jobs, employers want a ridiculous amount of previous experience.
Retail? You need 3 years of recent experience to restock shelves, scan price tags, hand over some change, give an insincere “have a nice day”, and just generally hold the fort.
Picking orders in a warehouse? Six months of recent experience. That is, six months of recent experience which a healthy and active young adult will obviously never get.
Hostess seating diners in a run-of-the-mill restaurant chain? Three years of similar experience. (Two years of experience clearly wouldn’t be enough to get the job done. I mean that line of work is sooooooooo difficult.)
This is exactly why many teenagers and 20-somethings cannot find work: the job market has simply eliminated the concept of an entry level job.
It seems like there is almost zero tolerance in allowing a job seeker just a few shifts of O.J.T. (on the job training) in order to acclimatize to a new line of work. All an advertiser has to do is require 1 year of experience as a dishwasher, and anyone outside of those currently working as dishwashers are out of the running. They always want somebody who will “hit the ground running”, which is another cute buzz phrase which routinely makes it to print.
In today’s job market, employers can set these ludicrously high standards precisely because there is such an overabundance of available labor that they can draw from. Adults with families to feed are working these jobs which were once almost the exclusive property of teenagers, college students, or recent graduates.
You cannot get a better paying or ‘living wage’ job without entry-level experience, so that means you will likely remain in your “mothers basement” or on welfare. But here is where things get strange, sometimes it’s better to not even be working at all than get dead-end entry-level jobs…
Long Term Unemployment Part III: It’s Not Your Fault
People who have either been employed their whole lives, settled into a career in more prosperous times, or have the political and business connections to easily procure jobs, do not identify with your plight. They will tell you to go “pavement pounding” like they did back in the good ol’ days, and that you need to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or something cute like that.
They are truly out of whack with how serious the unemployment situation is across the country. That would be an awful lot of “bootstraps” that need to be pulled up in order to give 90 million+ working age Americans a job don’t you think?
The fact is no matter how skilled or how good a resume somebody has, there will be untold millions of people who will never get a job in their profession. This will be due to an oversupply of labor (i.e. 250 people applying for 1 available position), outsourcing, automation, and the takeover of robotics which is vastly decreasing the need for paid labor in the US.
What results is there will be a large and permanent underclass of good-natured, un-tattooed, un-pierced, well-spoken, and well-educated people who will be unable to procure work. Even though they did exactly what they were told to do by their teachers, parents, political leaders, and society in general.
The psychological (and of course the financial) effects of long term unemployment can be devastating. But please, just remember that none of this is your fault. Don’t let it tear you down. Confide in someone, stay close to your family and friends, help one another whenever you can, and do not even think about taking your life away.
Your life always has value to your friends and loved ones, and you deserve to live a rich and full 80-odd revolutions around the sun within this corner of the cosmos, regardless of these highly unfortunate circumstances. Let me tell you again, it’s not your fault.
(And to all the naysayers who say things like “it’s because your not trying hard enough”, take these “bootstraps” and shove it.)
What You Can Do About It
I’m starting to wonder, very seriously now, if we’re truly running up against that ugly tipping point where the whole corrupt, twisted system unravels, and historical nastiness sets in. (Think France in 1786, just as the guillotines were getting sharpened.)
I hope it doesn’t come to this, but it’s just stupefying how utterly out of touch our politicians and media have become about the long term unemployment problem. Rapidly growing percentages of Americans are suffering in a state of severe, abject poverty. The middle class is disappearing, wages are plummeting, jobs are disappearing, people are hanging on for bare survival in a manner even worse than what you might have seen in Dickensian London. There is real and hardcore desperation and fear around us.
So what can you do?
If you are college educated, single, and don’t have any children, I would highly consider looking into teaching English in South Korea or China for awhile. These positions are still in high demand, pay adequately, and you are often provided with your own apartment for free as part of a deal sweetener. There is lots of potential to save a decent amount of money while experiencing a vastly different culture, and getting your mind off the troubles “back home”.
Look into online entrepreneurship. If you can manage to earn (somehow, someway) $10,000 per year online, you can live and have the same quality of life in numerous other countries as you would in the United States earning $40,000 per year. Don’t believe me? Look into places like Cochabamba, Bolivia where a decent apartment in a nice neighborhood can be yours for $250 per month!
If you have a trade, look and see if your skills are required in Australia, Germany, or Scandinavia someplace. It may surprise you as an American that a lot of these countries actually have higher wages, and a higher quality of life, than the United States in general.
However, the saddest part is that we really shouldn’t have to leave the United States. Weren’t we all promised in our “everybody gets a trophy” little league sports huddle-ups that we could all be rock stars and multi-millionaires someday? You know, you can achieve anything if you just “put your mind to it” or something like that?
Then I was offered the red pill, and I came to the conclusion that we have been emotionally and spiritually hijacked all throughout our Cultural Marxist spoon-fed youths. That makes me very angry and you should be too. Unemployment…. more wars …. very, very, pissed off…
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