Good news and bad on unemployment front in U.S.

By Kathleen Kenna and Hadi Dadashian

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it was the worst of years, it was a better year.

It was the worst year, because we’re both still unemployed, despite hundreds of job applications, job fairs, informational interviews and more.

It was a better year, because we resumed full-time job searches after growing our own company, Ocean’s Edge Media.

Good news: Our small business made more money in 2012 than in 2011.

Bad news: Our revenue still puts us below the poverty line — even before expenses.

Best news: We landed our first cover story for a Canadian magazine, and Kathleen landed her first major magazine story (Condé Nast). Our newspaper and online assignments ranged from mental health research to travel stories in California, Arizona, both Washingtons, and Canada.

Our public speaking and photography gigs increased.

It was a better year for three reasons:

1.  We expanded our reach with writing and photojournalism, tapping new markets and making a lot of new contacts. Already, our advance assignments portend a better financial year in 2013.

2.  We cut costs by moving to a smaller city.

3.  Kathleen finished her training as a CTP (Certified Trauma Professional) and became a U.S. citizen.

The latter is key, because she began to get interviews from dozens of job applications after her citizenship ceremony. In the previous 18 months as a Green Card holder, Kathleen had only a couple of interviews in her rehabilitation counseling field, despite more than 200 applications.

Investment in lawyers, paper work, etc. for Green Card and citizenship: About $7,000.

How we know the economy is really recovering

We both had more serious job interviews in the past four months than we’ve had during job searches in the past two years.

Kathleen was so excited after an Oregon state interview for vocational rehabilitation counselor, she posted at living in gratitude that it was “the best job interview in my life.”

Hadi is encouraged that there appears to be more growth in his field, optical, possibly because Americans are feeling confident enough to spend money on their health and eye care again.

(While some analysts were heartened by a dip in consumer spending on health care during the recession, we suggest it’s because people who are unemployed stop spending money on doctors, medical tests, dentists, and filling optical and other prescriptions because they’ve lost insurance. Other essentials — like food and shelter — claim any household funds before health care. It’s astonishing that 47 million Americans survive on Food Stamps, a U.S. record.)

The White House soothes some Americans with the news that the economy is recovering, and our success in landing more interviews confirms that it’s improving.

But it’s such a slow improvement that we believe the U.S. is still in a recession — a psychological recession. GDP growth of 2-3% makes us, as President Barack Obama likes to say, “cautiously optimistic.”

At job fairs this fall, we spoke to other job seekers in our age group (40s, 50s), and realized that long-term unemployment is, sadly, far too common still for people who have worked decades without ever being jobless. (In Hadi’s case, that’s working decades without any sick days or “personal time” off!)

So we’re encouraged that the national unemployment rate has dropped to 7.9% after starting 2012 at 8.3%. As we’ve written many times before, however, those stats don’t mean much to people who haven’t collected unemployment benefits and aren’t on national rolls.

Those stats don’t reflect so-called “discouraged workers”, who aren’t conducting full-time job searches either. Washington defines discouraged workers as people who have stopped looking for work. Since the Labor Department also defines discouraged workers as people who haven’t looked for work in four weeks, we don’t fit that official definition either.

Judging from the comments of other job fair participants, we’re all discouraged — no one is filing job applications full-time when they land freelance work (like us) or temporary, under-the-table work (like many engineers, carpenters and others finding sporadic work as housing starts improve). Even 23 million unemployed Americans have to pay their bills somehow.

Unemployment has decreased to 8.4% in our state of Oregon, so we’re at #40 in the U.S. All the new jobs are in the midwest, from the Dakotas to Iowa and Wyoming. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, at 3.1%, followed by Nebraska at 3.7%.

Worst unemployment? Nevada still leads the country at 10.8%, followed by Rhode Island at 10.4%, California, 9.8%, and New Jersey, 9.6%. Our state, Oregon, is ranked #40 out of 51, with an official jobless rate of 8.4%.

Corporate cash stockpiles at $5 trillion

Given the severity of this country’s continuing high joblessness (it was only 2008 when the U.S. rate was 5%), we had hoped the November election would help calm markets and spur corporations to start creating jobs with their estimated $5 trillion in cash stockpiles.

But “fiscal cliff” negotiations have agitated markets and affected consumer and business confidence. At Hire Your Neighbor, we want to be certain that unemployment benefit extensions are approved for those who need them most.

We’re optimistic that 2013 will be a better year for us and other under/unemployed workers seeking real jobs. We’re not so optimistic about Washington overcoming its partisan divisions to tackle the real issues affecting job growth in this country: deficit reduction, government spending, and significant tax reform.

We are certain that the next debate, about the U.S. debt ceiling, will do little to calm fears of Americans, employed or not.

NEXT: The good news about full-time work after 3 years of unemployment

Open letter from a jobless job counselor to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

Dear Governor Snyder:

Let’s cut the niceties and be straight:  Cutting unemployment insurance (UI) won’t create jobs.

It will create more misery.  It will lead to more poverty, more hunger, homelessness, and worse.

I understand your state is suffering, with official unemployment at 10.6%, compared to the national rate of 8.6%.

You and I both know those numbers are inaccurate:  The jobless rate in Michigan, like the national rate, is likely double that, since “official” numbers only tally those collecting UI.  They don’t include so-called “discouraged” workers, and the long-term unemployed.

On the other side of the country, I can’t pretend to know how to convince Michigan employers to create jobs when they’ve already had tax cuts, and you’re about to slash billions more from their taxes.

But crushing the vulnerable isn’t the answer, governor;  it’s never the answer.

Tax cuts for U.S. employers and the wealthy in the past decade haven’t helped the country much.  If they did, where are the jobs?

Governor, I worked as a job counselor for five years in two states — including two years in a city with the highest unemployment in the U.S. — so I know a little about this misery.

Americans are begging for work.  Offer many job seekers $10-an-hour jobs, and they’ll take them, with gratitude, no matter how much abuse they must endure to keep it.  (And from what I saw, the lower the wage, the more abuse.)

You intend to force almost a half-million job seekers off UI and into $10-an-hour jobs.

Really?

Does the $50,000-a-year social worker benefit society by taking a job away from a lower-wage worker?

Where do those workers go if employers decide they’re easily replaced by jobless workers with degrees?

Did you consider the single-parent nurse who won’t have time to seek work in her career or afford child care at $10-an-hour if she’s forced to work outside her helping profession?  Who does that help?  Who gets hurt?

Governor, when you announced these cuts last March, you said, “Let’s start the job creation process.”

What have you and Michigan’s politicians, employers and big thinkers been doing since then?

You said, then: “I wanted to make sure we could do whatever to help these people to continue on a path until they can find a job.”

Sounded more like you were blaming the jobless for being out of work:  “Let’s focus on bringing our unemployment rate down so we don’t have people on unemployment that’s going on for 20 to 26 weeks or 99 weeks.”

The U.S. Labor Dept. reports that average unemployment for U.S. workers collecting UI is more than 40 weeks.  It’s getting worse, despite tax cuts and bailouts and other aid to employers and financial institutions — that’s why Washington grudgingly agreed to those 99-week extensions.  Income disparity in this country grows wider too, amid more calls for more tax cuts and record profits in Corporate America.

Oh, and average unemployment for U.S. workers not collecting UI?  Estimates vary, but it’s edging up to two years.

You said this week that Michigan’s UI slashbacks (to a max of 20 weeks) are designed to “encourage people to work.  It’s not to have them go backward.”

That’s encouraging.  You must be certain there are plenty of $10/hr jobs, available now, for every jobless person in Michigan.  You sound certain that employers will use their tax breaks to create so many new jobs that Michigan will no longer have one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S.

Please post that jobs list asap.

“It’s easiest to find a job when you’ve gotten a job,” you said this week.

Again, really?

Spend some real time with job seekers, trainers, counselors and others at Michigan’s job offices.  Spend some real time with long-term unemployed workers.  Listen to them with the same time and attention span you gave the state’s big employers.

There are other solutions, Gov. Snyder.  It’s going to take some hard work and big thinking to get there — not little jobs and big tax cuts.

And please, let the rest of us know how that goes.

Respectfully, Kathleen Kenna

Related story:  Snyder among least popular governors in U.S. 

Q: What do these numbers mean for creating U.S. jobs?

from the news this week:

✓ Former CEO Corzine tells Congress:  “No idea where $1.2 billion went.”

(The former New Jersey governor’s testimony at Congress, courtesy of CBS News.)

✓ Well Fargo settlement is $148.2 M.

(To “settle” criminal and civil charges, for rigging bidding competitions to get millions more of our money from counties, cities across U.S. and Puerto Rico.)

✓ Americans’ wealth took its biggest hit in more than two years, including home values, pension funds and stocks, in the July-Sept. quarter.  It’s down to $57.4 trillion — the worst drop since Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in Sept. ’08.

✓ Corporate America (not incl. financial institutions) is “amassing record cash stockpiles.”

How much?  $2.1 trillion in cash and liquid assets, at Sept. 30.

That’s up $41 billion from June 30, according to the Federal Reserve.

A:  Record stockpiles for some; record unemployment in the richest nation on earth.

Related articles

• Hey Corporate America: Looking For A Solution To The Jobs Crisis? You’re Sitting On It (huffingtonpost.com)

Another American loses a job: Edward C. Forst leaves Goldman Sachs

We were buoyed by the news that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.6% — lowest level in almost three years.

However, we’re still wary of the “official” jobless rate, because it only tracks people who have been collecting unemployment insurance.

Many jobless Americans are not in these numbers, including so-called “discouraged” workers who are no longer seeking work, ill or disabled (and not receiving benefits).

The Labor Department acknowledged Friday that 315,000 people without jobs stopped applying last month.

Economists look at the seasonal surge in retail hiring, modest national output, and get excited that the United States isn’t dropping into another recession.

We look at the increase in minimum wage, temporary jobs, and conclude there’s a psychological recession in this country.

The Labor Department reports that the average length of unemployment is almost a year now — 41 weeks.  That’s 21% higher than last year.

Consider this more worrying number:  Only 64% of Americans are participating in the workforce.

That’s an historic low.

According to The New York Times, that’s “historically depressed.”

Even more depressing was the front-page Business news of the retirement, at 50, of Goldman Sachs’ Edward C. Forst, “confidant of the bank’s chief executive and a member of the company’s influential management company.”

No word on Forst’s severance, although it’s unlikely he’ll be one of those out of work who are waiting for Congress to extend unemployment insurance benefits.

Forst’s last publicly disclosed compensation, according to the NYT:  $49.1 million, in 2007.

Forst was one of the early advisers on the government’s bailout fund — he wasn’t at Goldman Sachs then.

(Goldman Sachs collected almost $13 billion, as a result of the AIG bailout, and sent billions out of the country.  It also paid a $550 million fine for misleading investors — “the largest penalty ever assessed against a financial services firm in the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission”.)

On an encouraging note, the Labor Department logged 120,000 new jobs in the U.S. last month.

Most are in small business, retail, and hospitality.

Hire Your Neighbor is a new venture, not reflected in any of these stats.

Why I spent $3 for the chance to have dinner with the First Lady and President Barack Obama

By Kathleen Kenna

I’ve been unemployed more than two years and I admit it, I just blew $3 on a big gamble — dinner with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

I’m not a gambler, but I couldn’t resist the tease that came with an email invite.

“Want to meet Barack and Michelle?”

This was in bold face, so I’m trying to reproduce its breathless appeal.

Yes, yes, yes I do!

I admire the couple, because they’re smarter than me.

I’m a huge fan of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign.

I admire her muscles.  I like her style, especially when she’s harvesting organic vegetables from the garden she planted on our White House grounds.

I’m grateful to President Obama for fighting for universal health care in this country, a place that not only has rejected me — a victim of terrorism — for health benefits, but also denied insurance to two healthy Americans, aged 26 and 28, half my age.

I believed then-Senator Barack Obama when he campaigned on promises of “hope” and “change.”

I’m still waiting for positive change.  (We began Hire Your Neighbor because of negative change in the U.S.)

But I’m a huge believer in hope.  It’s what keeps me going, despite unemployment, despite disability, despite chronic pain, despite discrimination.

(And, as a non-American, I still think it’s great that one of your presidents was born in a place called Hope.  As Jack Torry says, you can’t make this stuff up.)

I admire President Obama for “turning the other cheek”, despite all the public hate that passes as “opinion” in the U.S.

I admire President Obama for having the courage, unlike other presidents, to meet flag-draped coffins when they return home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

I admire him for allowing these sombre ceremonies to be photographed (and not the private meetings with families of dead soldiers, as did one of his predecessors).

So I want to have dinner with Barack Obama and his wife.

I want to thank them personally, for their courage and determination and hope.

I want to thank them for raising strong daughters, setting an example of good health and family joy (and no-TV homework nights!) for all of us.

I want to ask them the same questions our three-person Hire Your Neighbor team is asking all Americans:

1.  How many jobs have you created in this recession?

2.  How many jobs have been lost on your watch?

3.  What are you proposing to get 25 million Americans back to work?  What’s preventing you from doing this?

4.  Hire a neighbor, friends, hire a neighbor.

Me and Hadi and Hoover will have dinner anytime with anyone from any political party, anyone from Corporate America, any small business owner, anyone who has a solution to this country’s historic unemployment.

As long as they pick up the tab.

Obama’s invitation came with an offer of airfare and the meal, for “an approximate value of $4,800.”

Want a chance to have dinner with “Barack, Michelle and a guest of your choice”?

Minimum suggested donation is $3.  You could probably donate less.

Entries must be received by midnight on Dec. 31.

To qualify, you must be an American citizen (Hoover and Hadi), or “lawfully admitted permanent resident of the United States” (me).  You must be at least 16.

And sorry, Stephen Colbert, you can’t be a PAC or lobbyist or “foreign agent” to get in on this.

We suspect donors who pay the max — $2,500 — might get a seat at the table before we, the unemployed.

We’re prepared to be amazed if that’s not so (remembering how President Bill Clinton let fat cat donors sleep in our White House).

Expect a follow-up email, no matter what you donate.

As soon as we put the $3 on our Visa, we got another email, asking for more.

They wanted $25.

Hey, Mr. President, we’re unemployed!

Message from a jobless job counselor: Get Occupied!

My name is Kathleen Kenna and I’m a recovering job counselor.

Kathleen Kenna, recovering job counselor

I’ve helped dozens of people get jobs, from Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans to laid-off grandmothers.

Today, after two years and more than 200 applications, I am officially no longer looking for a job.

It isn’t there.

I’ve worked for income since I was 17.

I have a strong resume — two degrees, post-graduate clinical training, national awards, two careers — and a solid volunteer work resume.

As a rehabilitation counselor working with people with disabilities in two states over the past few years, I’ve helped others write resumes; coached them on interview strategies; helped them research career options; and much more.

But I don’t have any ideas anymore for anyone about how to get a job in this economy.

I’m not spending any more money on job applications.

I can’t afford the background checks, fingerprints and drug tests that applicants must pay, in a bid to get ever-shrinking social service jobs.

I can’t afford to waste any more time on futile job searches, either.

I need to stay healthy, because when we lost jobs, we lost our health care.

So today, I’m doing the best thing I can for my mental and physical health:  I’m creating one job in the United States of America.

MINE.

I join my husband, Hadi Dadashian, who lost the best job of his life last year.  (It was, BTW, close to minimum wage.)

Hadi Dadashian

Hadi is creating a second job in the United States of America.

HIS.

And our nephew, Hoover Wind, also under-employed, is joining us in launching a national venture:  Hire Your Neighbor.

This is not a political campaign.  We’re not endorsing any political party.

But this is a campaign.

A serious, loud, in-your-face campaign asking Americans important questions.

Like this one:  What kind of country do we want?

This is not an anti-government or pro-government campaign, nor an anti-business rant.

It’s a conversation.

Our mission is to put a face to the people who are out of work across America.

Like the three of us.

Hoover Wind

We’re not lazy; we’re educated; we have a strong work ethic; we can’t get work; and — message to Herman Cain — IT’S NOT OUR FAULT!

Let’s stop blaming each other.  Stop the name-calling.

Stop the noise that goes nowhere.

Let’s have a national conversation about what we ,the people, are doing to help we, the people, become fully employed.

We’re journalists and artists — on stage, online, and more — and we’re determined to stay positive.

We are positively determined to Get Occupied!, creating jobs in this country, one little job at a time.

We don’t have much money.

But we have enthusiasm, ideas, and lots of determination.

Hire Your Neighbor is on WordPress because it’s an international platform for sharing stories.

We’ve been using it for months to showcase our freelance work and our daily blog of thanksgiving.

We like WordPress because it has helped us connect with lively, engaged citizens across America, and all over the world.

Hire Your Neighbor will share stories of unemployment, and dispel some myths.

Myth No. 1:  It’s not 14 million out of work in America; it’s more like 25 million.

That’s the size of Texas.

(Trust me on this; I used to be a job counselor.)

Consider how much better the economy would be if the three of us and the other 24,999,997 had living wage jobs.

So, if you have an income — especially a high income — ask yourself this question after Thanksgiving dinner today:

What am I doing to help my neighbor?

Because, after all, we’re neighbors, and this historic unemployment is our collective burden.

If you’re part of Corporate America, sitting on more than $2 trillion in capital, what are you waiting for?

We really want some answers.

TOMORROW:  Hadi Dadashian, after one year of unemployment

… With thanks to Trader Joe’s, for the brown bag we recycled …