Opinion
Jobless: The Economy’s Invisible People
S
uppose one of the key com-
mittees
in
Congress
scheduled a hearing on one
of the country’s most debilitating
economic problems – the long-
term
unemployment
that’s
ensnared millions – and none of
the committee members showed
up?
That’s almost what happened
last week when the Joint Econom-
ic Committee’s April 24 hearing
opened with just one of its mem-
bers, Sen. Amy Klobuchar,
(D-Minn), the vice chair, in atten-
dance. At various times later, three
of the committee’s eight other
Democrats – Sen. Christopher
Murphy, of Connecticut; Rep.
John Delaney, of Maryland, and
Rep. Elijah Cummings, also of
Maryland – showed up. None of
its nine Republican members did.
Of course, it’s standard on Capi-
tol Hill for committee members to
miss congressional hearings. Their
aides have briefed them on the
issues and testimony of the wit-
nesses beforehand; and their time
that day may appropriately be
better spent meeting with con-
stituents, lobbyists, donors, other
politicos, or even another con-
gressional committee that had
scheduled a conflicting hearing.
Nonetheless, the near-com-
pletely no-show hearing acquired
a powerful symbolism once a
National Journal reporter who was
there tweeted a photo of the long,
curving impressive-looking dais
of mostly empty chairs.
It made the visual points that a
voluminous and growing file of
research has been cataloging since
the Great Recession peaked and
the economy began to recover four
NNPA C OLUMNIST
Lee A. Daniels
years ago. First, the recovery has
moved too slowly to pare the num-
ber of the long-term jobless –
those out of work for six months
or longer – from what continue to
be unprecedented levels. That fail-
ure has produced a growing fear
that many Americans in this
predicament – now numbering 4.6
million people – may never find
jobs again.
In turn, that has raised the
prospect that today’s long-term
unemployed are becoming a large,
permanent out-of-work class
whose joblessness will undermine
the nation’s economic productivi-
ty and whose need for financial
help will not only exert a tremen-
dous drain on the government’s
treasury and private-sector coffers
alike but also contribute to Ameri-
more potent the following two
days when the Senate and the
House hurriedly approved, and the
president hurriedly signed, legisla-
tion that forestalled any possibility
the air traffic control system
would be disrupted by sequester-
driven budget reductions. Critics
of the action contrasted Congress’
There is a growing fear that many
Americans in this predicament – now
numbering 4.6 million people – may
never find jobs again
quick reaction to complaints from
the business sector about airport
delays with its studied ignoring
pleas to show equal mercy to those
who depend on government social
programs – such as the long-term
Black Americans have been beset by a
crisis of high mass unemployment and
long-term unemployment for more
than four decades
cans’ growing pessimism about
their own and the country’s eco-
nomic fairness and political
leadership.
And, finally, and most damag-
ing, the tweet powerfully
suggested that the Congress just
doesn’t care about the long-term
unemployed.
The symbolism became even
Although the number of long-
term unemployed has fallen from
its peak above 6 million four years
ago, it remains the largest number
of long-term unemployed America
has endured at any one time since
the Great Depression of the 1930s.
More worrisome, two-thirds of
this group has been jobless for
unemployed.
Keith Hall, one of the congres-
sional committee’s witnesses,
succinctly described some of the
alarming statistics used to describe
the long-term unemployment cri-
sis. Hall, a former head of the
federal Bureau of Labor Statistics,
now directs a research center at
George Mason University.
more than a year.
It’s widely accepted that, gener-
ally speaking, the longer
individuals are jobless, the more
their connections to viable job net-
works will fade and advances in
technology will outpace their
skills. That belief is a major reason
employers, as numerous studies
show, are loath to hire unem-
ployed workers who’ve been
jobless for even just six months.
That reasoning means that in
today’s economy a great majority
of the long-term unemployed have
almost no chance of finding anoth-
er job.
The Joint Committee’s own
report suggests recommendations,
which are similar to those of many
economists and other observers.
Governments at the local and state
as well as the federal level must
forge policies that promote eco-
nomic growth and encourage
private employers to hire more
people. Governments also must
undertake new projects, such as
rebuilding the nation’s infrastruc-
ture, that would enable them to
hire more of the unemployed. The
public and private sectors must
“modernize” the community col-
lege system so that those
institutions can help retrain older
workers and prepare new ones to
meet today’s employment require-
ments.
It will come as no surprise that
Black American (and Hispanic-
American)
workers
are
disproportionately likely to be
among the long-term unemployed
and the very-long-term unem-
ployed. That grim reality
underscores the raft of statistics
that show that, in fact, black
Americans have been beset by a
crisis of high mass unemployment
and long-term unemployment for
more than four decades. That cri-
sis
sharply
divided
African-American society into an
“opportunity sector” and a “crisis-
ridden sector.”
For years those scholars and
activists who argued that this was
not a matter of Black inferiority
but of economic shifts in the labor
market and persisting racial dis-
crimination, were largely ignored.
I wonder: Now that the crisis of
mass long-term unemployment
has crossed the color line, will the
larger American society take the
same stance?
Lee A. Daniels is a longtime
journalist based in New York City.
His latest book is Last Chance:
The Political Threat to Black
America.
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May 1, 2013 The Portland Skanner Page 5