A recent article in the Atlantic reported on a study that examined the callback rates to interviews for a set of fake resumes where the only major difference was the duration the candidate had been unemployed.  The results weren’t surprising, and yet they do reflect a prejudice that may be setting up a snowball effect for future economic challenges, or at the very least a slower economic recovery.  It seems the biggest predictor of employment success for the job seeker is the length of time since your last job.  The invisible line of demarcation? Six months.

It’s not as if this concept hasn’t been around for years.  Explaining and underplaying these “gaps” is taught in almost every unemployment class and by recruiters and other advisors everywhere.  But in a time when economic crisis has pushed so many people beyond that six-month line is this a realistic demand for a hiring manager? Has this ideology become a prejudice that doesn’t only hurt job seekers, but the overall economic employment structure?

There are currently an estimated 4.6 million long-term unemployed in the United States, and 66% of those have been unemployed for over a year.  Did you process that?

To be counted as one of the long-term unemployed, an individual needs to have been out of the workforce for 6 months or more, be immediately available to start a job, and be actively pursuing employment.  Actively pursuing employment means sending out resumes, manually completing applications, interviewing or engaging in some activity that has the potential of actually gaining employment; simply searching job boards does not qualify as actively pursuing. There are 4.6 million people who meet the criteria, and according to many analysts that number is grossly underestimated.  Sixty-six percent, over 3 million of the “long-term unemployed,” have more than doubled the industry accepted amount of time to still be a viable candidate for employment.  Do you see the problem here?

These numbers increase monthly.  As new jobs open up, those people newly unemployed get the interviews, which logically results in the long-term unemployed continuing to be, well, unemployed and increasingly less viable.  Just to put numbers to this mayhem: 7.6% of the working-age population is unemployed and 40% of those have already reached the long-term unemployed status.  Every month those numbers increase as the number of new jobs reported are taken by the newly unemployed and the 3% of the working age population who are currently unemployed face a well-documented prejudice that will prevent them from obtaining employment.

Many analysts have started estimating the number of people dropping out of the workplace as a result of the long-term unemployed dilemma, and it is significant.  These numbers include the people who have chosen to stay-at home and adapt to becoming a one-income family, the people (usually those in their early 20s) who chose to go back to school for additional degrees, and those baby boomers who took an earlier retirement, electing to live beneath the level they originally worked to achieve, as well as those who have just given up and those who continue to look but are now requiring welfare assistance. The result of this exodus: the number of people in the workplace currently equates with the number of people in the workplace in 1980. That means the population increased, industry expanded with a burgeoning of hiring opportunities, and the number of college graduates increased exponentially and yet the workforce is smaller.  It also means there is a strain being placed on the system that weighs heavily against any job growth activity or economic initiatives.

It would seem some people are starting to think of the snowball effect beginning with continued foreclosures, reduced spending, and ending with an inadequate workforce as the jobs are created, but it doesn’t seem to be changing the attitudes in the workplace.  Hiring managers are stuck in the mindset they had during a good economy, not only regarding the 6-month demarcation, but also the notion that those long-term unemployed have not done their due diligence in remaining relevant to their industry.  The number of people seeking new certifications, joining networking groups, attending conferences, new trends/regulation downloads, etc. has remained the same even though the workforce has reduced.  How do you account for that if not for the unemployed staying firm in their goals and agendas?

There needs to be a paradigm shift, a real change in the ideologies and approaches to hiring.  The government initiatives for job growth are primarily geared toward the blue collar sector.  The stalemate is with the middle-management jobs and the white collar long-term unemployed who don’t have enough opportunities and aren’t considered for the few out there.  Even if they choose to “go where the jobs are” they need to first get trained in the blue collar sector.  They need training and certifications to work in the manufacturing and/or technical arenas that are opened.  That requires months and sometimes up to two years of training.  In the meantime, what do they do?  There’s not much they can do at this point.  They are caught in this Bermuda Triangle of a Long-term unemployment.  I wonder how long they will be lost in a system that has not adapted to the current crisis before change happens.