This Week in Poverty: A Little Help for the Long-Term Unemployed?

[LiveNudePolitics]

1. Longer term unemployed treated as unemployable.

As someone who has been plugging away at getting a "good" job, but forced to work part time at a lower wage, I wonder why the unfair hiring practices of corporations are not highlighted to a greater degree while unemployment rates are discussed. Not considering applicants who have not worked in a few years through no fault of their own is wrong, should be illegal, and is frankly UN-American.

I have been so close to getting hired at several companies over the last 4 years, only to be beaten out for the job by a younger, cheaper, ALREADY employed persons. It seems to me, that HR personnel and directors assume that it is your fault you were laid off, there must be something wrong with you, or else you would have a job currently, and they take you out of the equation. Is this fair? It is not. Not only an unfair practice, it is stupid to devalue experience because a job applicant had the misfortune to be caught up in an economic meltdown. I am in my late thirties now, I don't foresee the job market getting any easier for me, unless some hiring manager has the rare common sense to see my value as an employee, has nothing to do with my employment history. The fact that I have accepted lower paying jobs that I am over qualified for, instead of taking handouts from Uncle Sam, also serves to make me less attractive to Human Resources managers. This has spurred me to get my creative kicks and air my grievances on a blog www.livenudepolitics,com, which keeps me sane. I refuse to put myself into tens of thousands of dollars in debt, out of desperation, just to train for a new field I may not even find employment in.