Unemployment breakdown over age, sex, race, education

[Surlethe]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009 ... lines.html

This is really neat. The disparity between races is really fucking horrible: white men ages 25-44 with a college degree have an unemployment rate of 3.9%, black men ages 25-44 with a college degree have an unemployment rate of 8.3%. Black men ages 15-24 without any degree have ... wait for it ... 48.5% unemployment. That's jaw-dropping.

[General Zod]

I find it interesting that the people getting hit the hardest are in the lower age brackets across any demographic. The older you get the lower the unemployment rate. Aside from the obvious of so many being in college and others not being suited for very many jobs I'd be curious if there were an explanation for how that works.

[ArmorPierce]

Another thing I find interesting is despite people's claims that older people are having trouble finding work and dismissing the problems of the youth finding jobs as less important, the older people have significantly less unemployment at 6.3%

[bobalot]

To be fair, older people could have simply become discouraged and dropped out of the workforce altogether.

[ArmorPierce]

To be fair, older people could have simply become discouraged and dropped out of the workforce altogether.

Same cannot be said of any of the other groups? In fact I think it's likelier with the younger groups who simply went back to school, decided to stay longer or went on to grad school instead.

[Cosmic Average]

Doesn't it make sense? I mean, if you're downsizing, would you get rid of the more experienced employees first or the more recently hired? And because a lot of people have been laid off, there's a glut of employees, creating more competition. More competition for jobs and less demand for new hires means that employers literally have their pick of employees--and they're obviously going to go after the employees with the most experience.

[The Kernel]

As someone who actually makes hiring decisions all the time, I can say that the phenomenon of younger people being difficult to employ comes as absolutely no surprise and was the case even before the recession.

Think about it: hiring people is an investment and it's incredibly costly to have to terminate someone--not so much because of direct costs associated with the firing (although those do exist) but more because of the opportunity cost of filing a position with someone who is ineffective for the six months it takes to figure that out.

Ultimately it's just plain safer to hire someone with references and experience. I have never directly hired someone into a salaried position who hasn't had at least 4 years of experience in the target field--I HAVE hired people just out of school, but only into intern->hire or contract->hire positions, and even then I've usually regretted it. Unfortunately professional jobs have a steep learning curve the first few years and most managers don't have the patience to deal with people who don't have experience.

That being said, many big companies have huge training programs for kids out of college because they see it as an investment in future employees, but of course these programs are the first to go when the belt tightening starts.

[Broomstick]

To be fair, older people could have simply become discouraged and dropped out of the workforce altogether.

That, or they have better networks of friends/family, spouses to help support them, or are more resourceful at finding part-time work or other inventive ways to get by.

[Resinence]

That, or they have better networks of friends/family

This is the big one, finding a job in the current climate (and in a normal market) is almost all about who you know, not what you can do, a lot of young people have no connections in the industry they want to work in, so they are left to lean on their degree with no experience, well... there are 50,000 other mooks with the same degree looking for the same job who don't know anyone in the industry, and some of those have previous experience over the whippersnappers, it's a no-brainer for any HR manager looking to save costs. And then you have the people who's parents have told them their whole life that they are 'special' and 'better' (and let's face it this generation was basically told "get a degree and you will get a job" which is a blatant lie) than other people, so they refuse to take a shit job while they set them self up to do what they want.

I am white middle class and have connections through my family, as well as experience pre-recession, not exactly a dangerous demographic aside from being young, but I've taken some shit jobs when I needed the extra cash towards something important. And here in Aus at least, most of the people getting those are... white and middle class . Of course people still rant about darkies taking their jobs even though half of them are unable to find work

[ArmorPierce]

Yes, connections is basically the biggest part of it. I have read that employers that are now hiring are relying more and more on word of mouth recommendations from within the company or otherwise and they think that it is a superior way to hire anyway. Problem is that this kind of thinking fosters class division with people that have connections vs those that don't and find it impossible to get into the people with connections. Not to say that this wasn't basically the status quo before however.

[Resinence]

I've thought about it before and I for the life of me cannot figure out how one would go about breaking class division, it seems like since humans are social (read: we don't want to call ourselves herd animals) animals they are always going to favour others like themselves. I mean on an individual level you can do something if you have privilege - stop giving a shit whether your friends are rich poor black or white, if the alpha accepts someone into a group the others will usually follow, but most people seem content to stay within their comfort zone. Example, go to a bar and you will always see a group of men and women who all look and dress the same (and almost entirely white aside from a few tokens) clustered in a group, those are your average entitled dickheads. Another, I sometimes go to events where CEO's/Executives gather, 90% were born into the middle class or straight into the golden cradle, and those who clawed their way into it are an extreme anomaly, but usually good at what they do. I may be middle class but it's like an alien ecology listening to conversations about buying super cars and yachts like we buy ipods. It's literally like a separate world, some of these people never meet others who aren't on the same level - they hire people to deal with them by proxy. And it's always been like this, how are you supposed to stop decades of inertia?

edit: thousands of years, just replace upper class (oh yes, there is still an upper class, and middle-upper ain't it) with the aristocracy.

[General Zod]

I've thought about it before and I for the life of me cannot figure out how one would go about breaking class division, it seems like since humans are social (read: we don't want to call ourselves herd animals) animals they are always going to favour others like themselves. I mean on an individual level you can do something if you have privilege - stop giving a shit whether your friends are rich poor black or white, if the alpha accepts someone into a group the others will usually follow, but most people seem content to stay within their comfort zone. Example, go to a bar and you will always see a group of men and women who all look and dress the same (and almost entirely white aside from a few tokens) clustered in a group, those are your average entitled dickheads. Another, I sometimes go to events where CEO's/Executives gather, 90% were born into the middle class or straight into the golden cradle, and those who clawed their way into it are an extreme anomaly, but usually good at what they do. I may be middle class but it's like an alien ecology listening to conversations about buying super cars and yachts like we buy ipods. It's literally like a separate world, some of these people never meet others who aren't on the same level - they hire people to deal with them by proxy. And it's always been like this, how are you supposed to stop decades of inertia?

edit: thousands of years, just replace upper class (oh yes, there is still an upper class, and middle-upper ain't it) with the aristocracy.

I think you answered your own question. It's generally easier to relate to people that have similar experiences to yourself. I can't really imagine a conversation between a high powered CEO and some minimum wage waiter lasting more than a few words . . .because really, what would they talk about?

[Broomstick]

I think you answered your own question. It's generally easier to relate to people that have similar experiences to yourself. I can't really imagine a conversation between a high powered CEO and some minimum wage waiter lasting more than a few words . . .because really, what would they talk about?

Well, I had that experience once.... talking to an uber-rich CEO while being near the bottom of the totem. Know what we talked about?

Dry-cleaning.

Seriously.

The man was required to wear wool suits on the job, looking good was important

But yeah, not much in common. Two completely different planets.

[Broomstick]

Yes, connections is basically the biggest part of it. I have read that employers that are now hiring are relying more and more on word of mouth recommendations from within the company or otherwise and they think that it is a superior way to hire anyway. Problem is that this kind of thinking fosters class division with people that have connections vs those that don't and find it impossible to get into the people with connections. Not to say that this wasn't basically the status quo before however.

It was common before, but when times are good employers are more willing to take a chance, and there is a much smaller pool of potential employees to chose from.

I've had several well-meaning people urge me to relocate to find a job, but the only work I've gotten these past two years (other than the Census job, which in fact required me to have lived in this area for a few years) has been through my tattered network here, and on top of that, my health insurance is tied to my residence in Indiana. Moving elsewhere would just deprive me of what few connections I have here, leaving me even worse off. The only justification for moving would be to somewhere that a job is already waiting for me.