Job listings say the unemployed need not apply

By Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – Tuesday, July 26, 2011



Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.



The New York Times' Catherine Rampell said she found preferences for the already employed or only recently laid off in listings for "hotel concierges, restaurant managers, teachers, I.T. specialists, business analysts, sales directors, account executives, orthopedics device salesmen, auditors and air-conditioning technicians." Even the massive University of Phoenix stated that preference, but removed the listings when the Times started asking questions.



The concerted shunning of unemployed Americans by prospective employers was a common theme that cropped up in the thousands of responses that poured in when we asked Yahoo! readers to share their experiences of unemployment for our "Down But Not Out" series.



Reader Susan W. said she was being treated "as if it were my fault I was unemployed, regardless of the fact that I had put out hundreds of resumes and applications."



Legal experts told the Times that explicitly barring unemployed people from applying does not qualify under the statutory definition of discrimination, since unemployment is not a federally protected status like age or race. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently set out to establish whether employers were discriminating against certain protected groups because they are overrepresented in the ranks of the unemployed, such as African-American and older workers. (We covered that meeting here.) New Jersey recently passed a law barring employment ads that seek to rule out applications from those who are unemployed.



Even if the practice of weeding out unemployed applicants doesn't fit the legal definition of discrimination, it sure feels unfair for the more than 6.3 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months to be told they are automatically disqualified for the few openings that are out there. "I feel like I am being shunned by our entire society," Kelly Wiedemer, an unemployed information technology specialist, told the Times.


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/job-listings-unemployed-not-apply-133143362.html



WW

If Congress & the President really wanted to help us get jobs, they would offer Tax Incentives (yes, cuts or credits) to hire anyone unemployed for over 6 months. Just like they did under Clinton's Welfare to Work program in the '90's.



Sometimes I feel like employers view me as the stereotypical "Welfare Queen" anyway!

The problem is people still don't see the problem. I am tired of people stating that there are jobs out there and I must not be looking hard. One person told me there are thousands of jobs there that need workers but when I asked where these jobs were she stated "there's always McDonalds". Um wrong answer because McDonalds is getting thousands of resumes. I applied there during the huge job spree they had an no response at all.

Hi new_wave_princess, jen, and anyoldname,



What with companies ramping up to full steam ahead with the next round of mass-layoffs, I cannot imagine that those rare-birds that ARE hiring will be exactly falling all over themselves to higher an LTU.



The one thing I saw on some forum was that somewhere or another there is an experiment underways to offer to pay several months of an employee's wages if employers would hire a 99er. That is the kind of incentive that might just move employers to "take a gamble."



WW

We should be a disadvantaged worker like other groups. IThey give tax breaks to hire certain people like those on welfare, why not us?

Hi new_wave_princess,



I have a feeling that pretty soon, those kinds of tax breaks and so forth - al the "great society" stuff will be gone. Any argument about "fairness" is rendered entirely moot, when an employer can say:



"you know what, um, I don't like people telling me who I can hire and why. So, what I'll do is I'll outsource the job to China and get a nice big tax break for doing that."



You do realize that neither Dems nor Repubs of any consequences are saying the very least thing about halting outsourcing of jobs. And as long as the jobs can be sent overseas to sweatshops, there is no such thing as "unfair," and indeed the very word becomes laughably quaint.



What do you think (Y/N)?



WW



p.s., I'd sent you an email.

I'll go look at my email. I have been having issues with my email but will look.



I know what the simple solution is and we all do: stop outsourcing. Of course neither party will stop it.

Hi new_wave_princess,



You know, both parties are - either actively or passively - supporting continued outsourcing. Why, a friend of mine who attended Federal boot-camp job-search program funded through the Workforce Reinvestment Act was told by his trainers (last August) that the US would lose - at minimum - another 1M jobs to overseas outsourcing annually, for at least the next four years.


That's what the FEDS told him!


Can you imagine the loss of another 4M jobs between now and 2014? How could there possibly be a labor-market recovery in light of that? And we're not even talking about illegal immigrants or corporate-sponsored immigrants who can immigrate because corporations cry that they "can't find qualified help" domestically.

WW

At the URL http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homemadeindustrialtools/ you will find a $300 plow on a $500 truck that can earn you $50,000 over a good winter. It was made from two 3 point hitches and a broken plow from the junk yard. It took me almost six hours to build because I did not have a commercial plow to copy. The plow is 25 years old and still works fine. Feel free to copy it. No one ever asks me how old I am or how old the truck is when I pull up in their drive, they do not give a damn. It is an excellent resume and if you do good work they will call you every time it snows. Try and get $2 a minute at any other job. I will be showing other home made tools if there is any interest at the site.

That's great but what if you can't do that? I can't I am disabled so anything strenous is hard for me (I have arthritis).

After two bullet holes, one stab wound and six heart attacks some people would think that I am disabled, they would be wrong. Things are hard for me too but I do what I need to do. I have other jobs that require less effort, you can see them at http://survivingunemployment.weebly.com/#/ in a segment called Jerry's corner. There are always things that you can do to make money, tie dyed T shirts sell very well, require little investment and are easy to make. Swap meets are inexpensive store fronts where you get 10,000 people a day past your booth.