How's The Obama "Recovery" Working Out For You?

[dales]

Young war veterans struggle to find jobs
By Mark Emmons


memmons@mercurynews.commercurynews.com

Posted: 04/27/2013 12:00:00 PM PDT
April 27, 2013

Help for unemployed war veterans: Statistics and resourcesSAN JOSE -- The simple, heartfelt expression of gratitude toward men and women in military uniform has been repeated countless times in recent years: Thank you for your service.

But when post-9/11 members of the military exchange their fatigues for business attire, that thanks doesn't always extend to being willing to hire them as civilians. Joblessness for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan remains stubbornly higher than the overall population.

That is despite an unprecedented effort -- including government tax credits and high-profile initiatives by companies such as Walmart -- to help veterans transition into civilian careers. And the problem could get worse as an estimated 1 million people leave

Tyler Golightly, who was an Air Force captain who served in Iraq and has a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Southern California, has been looking for work without success since October 2011.

"Companies interview me, but they end up hiring somebody else," said Golightly, 31, who lives outside Modesto and recently attended a veterans job fair in San Jose. "They say they're looking for veterans, people with engineering degrees, people with experience. But here I am. I served my country. I don't have any complications. But I don't get anything in return."

With the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans sitting at 9.2 percent -- well
above the nation's 7.6 percent rate[that's a B.S. statistic, it's closer to double that!] -- he is not alone. About 207,000 recent veterans were without work in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The causes are varied and complex, veterans advocates say, including difficulty transferring military experience into the civilian workforce, poor coordination in efforts to assist veterans in finding jobs and the stigma associated with combat-related mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder.


However, the biggest problem is that new veterans and employers just do not speak the same language. Something is lost in translation.

"The vast majority of people in this country didn't serve," said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "Civilians just don't get what vets did in the military. It can seem like vets were beamed down from Mars."

For their part, veterans can do a poor job of explaining their talents and allow themselves to be typecast by employers who don't understand what something like "infantry squad leader" means on a résumé.

"That person might have led 12 men in Afghanistan," said Kevin Schmiegel, executive director of Hiring Our Heroes. "He built schools, negotiated with

James McKinstry of SAP, left, talks to Emily Mogg, as her service dog, "Daisy" waits during the "Hiring Our Heroes" job fair. (Gary Reyes)tribal warlords, oversaw millions of dollars in equipment. The world should be his oyster. But we can't look at that title and think that the only job he's well-suited for is as a security guard.

"And if we do have that mentality, what does that say about our country?"

Sgt. 1st Class Alvin Prado, 38, also attended the San Jose fair and said he doesn't know what will await him when he soon retires from the Army after serving 20 years.

"I'm a little afraid of what's out there, to be honest," said Prado, who is stationed in Stockton and served three tours in Iraq. "I know how to lead soldiers. But now I will be dealing with civilians, and I don't know if I have the skills companies want."

Unemployment gradually has been dropping for veterans and nonveterans alike. And the 7.1 percent jobless rate for veterans, overall, is lower than their civilian counterparts. The problem is that younger veterans -- men and women likely to have served since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- are having a harder time finding work.

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report for 2012, the unemployment rate for veterans ages 25 to 34 is 10.6 percent and a whopping 20.4 percent for the 18-to-24 age group. Those numbers were much higher than the civilian figures of 8.2 percent for those 25 to 34 and 15 percent for the 18-to-24 cohort.

Hiring experts say those veterans often go straight from high school to the military and then, after leaving the service, find

Bill Staehle and Gary McLeod of the American Legion Willow Glen Post 318 greet veterans attending the "Hiring Our Heroes" job fair. (Gary Reyes)themselves back in their hometown -- the place they left seeking better opportunities. They also end up looking for their first job without knowing how to make "an elevator pitch" or put together a résumé that cuts through acronym-filled military-speak.

Ann Weeby, a veterans employment specialist with Goodwill of Silicon Valley, recalls seeing a friend's résumé that was three pages long and highlighted the missions he conducted and the number of insurgents he helped capture.

"He was very proud of that, but that's not what employers are looking for. ... The vets I work with need help in getting their résumé transformed into something employers can fully appreciate," said Weeby, 32, who served in Iraq.

Hiring Our Heroes, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce program, has staged 490 job fairs since March 2011, resulting in more than 18,400 veterans and military spouses finding work. Schmiegel, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, said that while their goal is to introduce employers to the talent pool, veterans must close the deal.

"This isn't charity," he said. "We can help show veterans where the jobs are and how to broaden themselves. But once they have the tools, then it's up to them."

SAP, the global business software company that maintains a strong Silicon Valley presence, was the title sponsor of the San Jose job fair. James McKinstry, who manned the firm's booth, said veterans often don't have specific IT skills required in high tech. However, SAP is willing to teach those in exchange for the intangibles that veterans offer.

"I know it's a big challenge turning what they did in the military into a civilian profession," said McKinstry, who served in the Army for eight years. "But when you're a team player, a go-getter, a problem-solver, who doesn't want that?"

A study conducted by Prudential and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, though, found that 24 percent of veterans felt companies avoid hiring them in part because they have "too much baggage." Those results are similar to a Society for Human Resource Management survey last year where about one in three HR professionals cited PTSD or other mental health issues as hiring "challenges."

Samantha White, 35, a Navy veteran from San Ramon, said the damaged-veteran image has hindered her attempts to find work.

"In my experience, I think companies are very hesitant about hiring veterans," said White, who is attending the University of Phoenix after not finding work. "Maybe there is a stigma about coming out of the military with problems."

Personal stories like that frustrate Gwen Ford, head of the San Jose nonprofit Project Hired, which helps the disabled find employment, including veterans.

"Employers just automatically assume that a veteran has PTSD and that it will affect their workplace in a detrimental way," she said. "When I hear that, I usually mention that they're probably sitting next to someone right now with PTSD, and that person never was in the military."

Golightly remains intent on clearing whatever hurdles exist. He has been living on savings and refuses to file for unemployment.

"I just want to work," he said.

[rubato]

You are SUCH a negative nelly.


Thanks to Karl Rove and Grover Norquist there are more opportunities to hire disabled vets now than ever before!



yrs,
rubato

[dales]

Go kiss your Aunt Fanny.

Only a heartless cretin would mock disabled vets.

[Econoline]

Karl Rove and Grover Norquist are disabled vets????????

[rubato]

Only a heartless cretan would make so many more of them.

Or a Republican asshole.

yrs,
rubato

[dales]

Only someone lacking in cognition would hide from the obvious and retreat into name-calling.

[Gob]

Only a heartless cretan would make so many more of them.

Or a Republican asshole.

yrs,
rubato

Rubato is racist against the Cretans now, what have they ever done to him?

Cre·tan

adjective
1. of or pertaining to the island of Crete or its inhabitants.
noun
2. a native or inhabitant of Crete.

[dales]

Good catch there, Gob.

[Lord Jim]

Strop catching a spelling mistake....

What are the odds?

[dgs49]

I suppose that (the former) Captain Golightly was chosen as an example in this article because his situation is difficult to understand - a degree from a good school in mechanical engineering, plus what one would assume is good management experience...

Why can't he get a job? Is he geographically flexible? How does he interview?

In my own civilian career I have found that military experience is sometimes a positive thing and sometimes not. The military experience teaches a form of diligence, but it also teaches a form of what i might call, a "militaristic bureaucratic empty sense of urgency." If you are not actually in combat, your mission in life is simply to be prepared, which is, when you get right down to it, looking busy while not actually doing anything. Working in this enviroment for a period of years can result in people who never actually get anything done. And it's difficult to sort out this sort of applicant from one who actually will get things done.

I would not give preference to an applicant simply because he is a veteran. In fact, he would have to demonstrate to me that he has actually accomplished things in his work history.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Sort of like you need experience for a job but no one will hire you so you can get that experience.

[dales]

So how IS that Obama "recovery" working out for you?

Rich got richer during the recovery, and rest got poorer, study says





By Allison Linn, TODAY

The nation’s richest American households generally gained wealth during the first two years of the economic recovery, a new research report finds, while most American households saw their net worth drop.

The report, released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, found that the mean net worth for the 7 percent of American households at the top of the wealth distribution rose by 28 percent between 2009 and 2011, the most recent data available.

Meanwhile, the mean net worth for the other 93 percent of American households fell by 4 percent during that period, according to Pew’s analysis of Census data.

Overall, the aggregate net worth for all American households rose between 2009 and 2011. But Pew’s more detailed analysis showed that the gains were concentrated among the wealthiest Americans, and the wealth gap increased during that time.
Economists say that’s a continuation of a trend toward more wealth being found at the top of the income scale.

“There’s been a growing concentration of wealth in this country for quite a while now, and it’s just really accelerated in the last, really, 15 years,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist with Naroff Economic Advisors, who was not involved in the Pew study.

The Great Recession officially ran from December of 2007 to June of 2009, but the recovery since that time has been weak and uneven.

The Pew researchers said rallies in stocks and bonds, which benefited affluent households with major investments, largely drove the discrepancy in wealth gains during those two years.

The housing market, where many other Americans derive a lot of their wealth, did not do that well during that period.

The Pew researchers said they focused on the top 7 percent of the wealth distribution because that was the tabulation available from the Census data. The report found that the mean net wealth for those 8 million households rose to around $3.17 million in 2011, from approximately $2.48 million in 2009.

For the other approximately 111 million households, mean net worth fell to nearly $134,000 in 2011, from nearly $140,000 in 2009.

The report’s authors note that some less-wealthy American households no doubt saw wealth gains during the period. In general, however, more of the households in that 93 percent saw their wealth fall rather than rise.

Naroff noted that income distribution is always shifting in one way or another, but the wealth gap has grown especially wide in recent years. That could pose problems for an economy that is largely driven by consumer spending.

“We haven’t seen it at least in 100 years as heavily distributed to the upper income side as we’re seeing now, and we don’t know whether that pattern is readily reversed,” he said. “And if it’s not reversed what happens to the economy that’s built on a consumer base? That’s the uncertainty that we have.”

[dgs49]

So....your position (dales) is that there WAS an economic recovery?

What flavor Kool-Aid do you like?

[dgs49]

O&W, the point is that Military Vets HAVE experience, but it should be looked at with some skepticism because much of what the Military does is, basically, nothing - while seeming to look busy and productive.

In addition to my three years in the Army, I spent five years working as a civilian in DoD, and most of the officers I came into contact with were most adept at writing reports that made themselves appear productive, without actually doing any productive work. They considered themselves "pure managers," which is a category that basically doesn't exist at lower levels of management in the private sector.

[dales]

So....your position (dales) is that there WAS an economic recovery?

What flavor Kool-Aid do you like?

Only for the top dogz, fool.

[Guinevere]

The federal government gives vets a significant priority in hiring, for almost all jobs. Many states do the same. Just about every municipality I know does also, at least with respect to law enforcement positions. That is a significant advantage that lots of people do not have. It seems to me, that the lower employment rates of veterans (which, if your claim about the overall employment numbers is correct, may not be accurate) is in part a consequence of the tens of thousands of cuts in government jobs in the last decade.

[dgs49]

Not to belabor the point, but I was hired by DoD without a bachelor's degree, because I scored over 100% on the aptitude test (PACE), when counting my 5 point veterans preference. And the managers who were forced to hire me (none of whom had college degrees) were very unhappy at being compelled by regulations to hire some buffoon with no (fucking) Degree, when they COULD have had someone with a degree in, say, English Lit. Their attitude was the driving force behind my decision to finish my degree and go to law school. Fuck 'em.

Although I do not have the actual numbers at my fingertips, I rather doubt that the size of overall GOVERNMENT in these United States has shrunk significantly in the past decade. I am aware that hundreds of thousands of federal jobs were shifted to "consultants," who are, mainly, government employees and ex-military folks who retired at 52 and continue to suckle at the taxpayers capacious breasts, doing the same "work" they did when working for the government, at twice the price.

God save us from Government "shrinking."

[dales]

What's Wrong With the U.S. Job Market?

By Peter Coy

May 09, 2013

Joey Griffiths grew up in the western New York town of Dunkirk and left home at 17. Now he’s 30 and working as a bill collector in Jackson Heights, Queens. He has bills of his own to pay. Says Griffiths: “I’m good at collections because I understand what they’re going through. Just surviving.”

You hear a lot of just-surviving talk on the sidewalks of Jackson Heights, a polyglot neighborhood just south of LaGuardia Airport. Rajesh, a limo driver who declined to give his last name, says he’s barely scraping by in spite of driving or waiting for fares at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week. “One day ends, the next day is coming,” he says. Klaus Bauer, a 24-year-old immigrant from Cape Town, South Africa, is trying with little success to make it in computer science. He’s homeless. “Right now I might be moving somewhere,” says Bauer. “Another city. Another state. Trying to find some seasonal work, off the books. Get my own IT business together.”

For all the positivity about the April jobs report—lowest unemployment rate in four years!—the U.S. job market remains dismal. One statistic makes the point: Just 58.6 percent of American civilians aged 16 and up had jobs in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a lower employment-to-population ratio than during the worst of the 2007-09 recession. Even though the jobless rate has fallen, millions of people aren’t counted as unemployed because they’ve stopped looking for work, or never started.

It’s time to stop and figure out what’s wrong. Politicians and economists have been talking about high unemployment for better than five years, to little effect. Some of the explanations offered seem to border on rationalizations for why nothing can be done. That’s not good enough. Extended unemployment is not only a human tragedy for the jobless and their families. It’s also a waste of human capital in a nation that can ill afford to discard valuable resources.

The breakdown of the labor market can be blamed on either supply or demand. Those who argue that the supply of labor is the main problem say that many Americans simply aren’t qualified for the jobs available. On May 7, the BLS reported that there were more than 3.8 million job openings in the U.S. at the end of March—at a time when more than 11 million people were looking for work.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... gn_id=yhoo

[oldr_n_wsr]

From the article.

But an emphasis on workers’ deficiencies can morph into a blame-the-victim mentality. And it’s not the whole story—far from it. A new study by three Canadian economists says that today’s jobs don’t require more smarts than jobs of the recent past. As shown in the adjoining chart, the researchers found that the average “cognitive content” of tasks performed by employed college graduates of all ages peaked in 2000 and has dropped fairly steadily since. The study is by Paul Beaudry and David Green of the University of British Columbia and Benjamin Sand of York University in Toronto. In the same vein, the Conference Board, a company-supported research organization, recently found that since 2000 the importance of math and science skills in jobs declined, while social skills became more important.

Because we are doing less designing and manufacuring those designs (math and science skills) and more "you want fries with that" (social skill).

[Long Run]

Still 3 million jobs to go to get back to the number of jobs in January 2008; lost 8.7 million jobs in the bottom of the jobs recession as of January 2010. It will take about another 18 months to add back those 3 million jobs at the current pace of employment gains. Then there will be the 2 million jobs that need to have been added to keep up with the growing work force. It has been a long slow slog out of the bottom of the trench.