I was recently visiting with some of my friends from college who graduated in the past 2-3 years. Most left college and found a good job and started making decent first salaries. Due to the recession, several of these individuals have unfortunately been laid off. One of them told me she took a 5 week sabbatical to Africa. Both have iPhones with calling plans of at least $70/month.
My point is not to ridicule them, because who knows what’s really going on in each of their respective financial worlds. However, from the outside, it looks like unemployment is paying the bills and gives them little incentive to find a new job. To be fair, both are single and don’t have families to support. For someone with a family, unemployment might not be so painless. However, with unemployment benefits now lasting as long as 79 weeks, one wonders whether the programs are helping or extending the problems.
I remember when I was 16 my dad told me I needed to find a job. After a couple weeks he asked how my job search was and I said no one was hiring. He said, well you know what, McDonald’s is always hiring and so if you don’t find a job by this weekend, you need to go apply at McDonald’s. Guess what??? Miraculously I found a job that week. If you’re on unemployment, it’s not that you can’t find a job, because there are jobs available. It’s that you don’t want to take a job unless it pays more than your unemployment benefits. If unemployment pays $400/week, that’s $20,800 a year. Not a lot, but remember you aren’t working. You dont have a commute or a boss. So what is all your time worth? Is it worth $10,000 extra to go to work 40 hours per week and deal with all the crap? Probably not. How about $20,000? Who knows? My point is, unless you find a job paying a lot more than unemployment pays, why would anyone accept any jobs? That is the problem with unemployment. It should be embarrassing, annoying, and painful to remain on unemployment.
Last 3 posts by Jason
- Reply To All - March 16th, 2010
- You Can't Make This Stuff Up - February 19th, 2010
- Washington Gridlock - February 11th, 2010
I laughed out loud reading this, remembering those conversations. Why was McDonald’s Mom and Dad’s always go-to? Talk about giving us some fear!
All those people living comfortably on unemployment should be forced to live in a place like NY where only $400 would give them some real fear. We can’t live off that here.
Yet another government program that needs to be scaled back if it’s going to be effective.
I agree. People should not want to be on unemployment. There needs to be an incentive to make people want to get off of it as quick as possible. I don’t know if humiliation is the best way to do that, like some communities do with publishing pictures of sex offenders in newspapers. Maybe benefits that decrease by 5% of the total over 20 weeks, something like that? Since they’re gradually decreasing, there is a point where they can’t easily live off it and suddenly they’re willing to “deal with all the crap” that you’re talking about. Just an idea.