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

Hire a veteran — get a tax break, fuel America’s recovery

If the United States is to recover from its worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression, Americans must get serious about giving jobs to veterans.

Almost one-third of veterans from Gulf War II to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are out of work, according to a new report by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The official jobless number for vets aged 18-24 is 29.1%.  For civilians in the same age group, it’s 17.6%.  These numbers don’t count those who don’t register for unemployment or other benefits, so the actual rate is far higher.

Officially, unemployment among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is 11.6%, higher than the 8.3% national average for civilians.

Ask job counselors working with veterans and they’ll tell you Washington’s numbers don’t come close to accurately counting the jobless vets they’re seeing.  Many fear Americans will turn their backs on these warriors, just as the country did to Vietnam vets.

This is a moral issue:  We asked troops to risk their lives to protect Americans from another terrorist attack.

It’s a financial issue:  If we don’t provide employment for more than 1 million returnees, we will pay in higher medical and social costs, and incalculable costs in human suffering.

It is also a fundamental issue for American safety and prosperity.

NBC’s Anne Curry, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, notes that getting veterans back to work “may well be the most selfish thing our nation can do right now.”

Selfish because the “best and the brightest”, who had the training and courage to fight in multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, have skills and leadership that can fuel America’s economic recovery, she emphasizes.

“Whether today’s military men and women—the best-trained and most experienced military force in the history of our nation—can similarly drive our economy largely depends on whether we remember our history,” Curry writes, referring to the post-war economic recovery spurred by World War II vets.  She’s the daughter of a veteran too.

NBC News today launched a “Hiring Our Heroes” campaign, starting with military job fairs across the nation. Its emphasis is on Corporate America, because the national campaign is twinned with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

(Check for upcoming job fairs in 400 communities across the country.)

Many corporate heavyweights have signed on, from Microsoft to Home Depot. Mid-sized firms have made pledges too, leaving the heart of the country, the nation’s small business owners, to quietly do what they always do — hire their neighbors.

Hiring vets is “good for the bottom line,” the White House says, touting academic research showing the benefits to business.

It helps employers to get tax credits up to $9,600 for each worker, signed into law last fall by President Barack Obama. More government aid is available for training too.

In an election campaign year, veterans are the poster heroes for the estimated 20 million unemployed workers in the U.S.

We hope this will spur employers to begin hiring again, and for consumers to get more involved in this nation’s recovery.

No dinner with the Obamas, but letter from the president helps

 

We wanted dinner with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Wanted to share our experiences talking to unemployed people across the U.S., and ask, Where are the jobs?

No White House dinner for Hire Your Neighbor, but we did get this form letter from the president:

Dear Friend: Thank you for your kind note.  Your thoughtful words join a chorus of millions of Americans who are eager to lead our Nation towards a brighter tomorrow. Each day, I am inspired by the encouraging messages of hope and determination I have received from people across the country.  With the magnitude of challenges we face, we will only overcome them if our imagination is joined to common purpose. The future we leave to our children and grandchildren will be determined by our willingness to shoulder each other’s burdens, take great risks, and move forward as one people and one Nation.  With your help, we will build on what we have already achieved and lay a new foundation for real and lasting progress. Sincerely, Barack Obama

This is how democracy works, one call, one email at a time

By Hoover Wind, Hadi Dadashian and Kathleen Kenna

We urged Americans yesterday to call the White House and members of Congress to fight for an unemployment benefits extension.

And today, it worked.

Phone lines to some Congress members were jammed (we know; we tried), and so many Americans emailed President Barack Obama (including Hire Your Neighbor) that the White House website couldn’t accept any more comments for awhile.

This is what we mean when we say, Get Occupied!

When residents of the United States call their politicians, good things can happen — and in bipartisan strength.

It’s only a two-month extension for unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts, but it’s a start.

Both the President and House Speaker John Boehner announced today that a two-month deal will protect both the tax cuts and unemployment benefits.  It’s likely to go to a vote Friday.

That means almost 2 million Americans won’t lose their unemployment benefits in January.

That might not mean much to Wall St., but it obviously does to Washington.

The news: Unemployment benefits extended (ABC News)

Call Congress. Call President Obama. Urge them to extend unemployment benefits

By Kathleen Kenna, Hadi Dadashian and Hoover Wind

We’re ashamed and appalled that members of Congress are going home to holiday feasts and celebrations and denying the rights of people without jobs.

We’re ashamed that unemployment benefits are again being used as a pawn in Washington’s chess game. Hurting the vulnerable is always the path Congress takes when it refuses to do the work that we, the people, expect.

It’s estimated 1.8 million workers will lose their unemployment benefits within weeks, and another 6 million — equal to the entire population of Missouri — face losing this safety net next year.

Yet unemployment benefits are so critical in this lame economy that 18 million Americans have relied on them since the 2008 recession.

As workers who have subsidized these benefits in good faith, we demand that Congress use our contributions for the purpose they were intended:  Helping people who are unemployed survive while seeking work.

American employers pay into the system believing it will be a safety net if they suffer layoffs, shutdowns, terminations or downsizing.  Workers indirectly pay for this protection too.

(Check the House of Representatives website for FAQ about how unemployment insurance is funded in the U.S.)

The economy is so rough on so many — with and without jobs — that the jobless are demonized for using unemployment benefits to support their families when they’re forced out of work.

We hear about new job losses every day, from police on the east coast to 30-year IBM workers on the west coast.  The national unemployment rate, officially at 8.6%, is far higher than Congress admits, because so few jobless people are actually collecting or seeking unemployment benefits.

There are an estimated 25 million people out of work in this, the richest nation on earth.  That’s equal to the population of Texas.

Worse, unemployment is lasting longer:  New stats show the average duration of U.S. unemployment is 41 weeks.  Most who lose their jobs involuntarily are out of work for months. The U.S. Bureau of Labor reports that 59% of jobless people in America are unemployed for 15 weeks or more.

Despite signs of improvement — house construction is up almost 10% — economic growth still lags, and jobs are not being created at a pace that helps most unemployed Americans.

The Salvation Army, food banks, faith groups and other selfless Americans across this country report that demand for the basics of life — food, warm clothes — has soared since the recession hit.  Need has not diminished in this so-called jobless recovery.

And shelter, in the worst foreclosure crisis in this nation’s history, remains a worry for millions.

To reduce unemployment benefits at a time of high unemployment is unconscionable.

It’s immoral.

People of all faiths are pressuring Congress to do the right thing.

Interfaith Worker Justice has held public prayer vigils in Washington, seeking help for the jobless. Echoing Occupy Wall St., they’re asking the 1% to share more of America’s wealth with the 99%.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to Congress this week urging politicians to extend unemployment insurance.

“When the economy fails to generate sufficient jobs, there is a moral obligation to help protect the life and dignity of unemployed workers and their families,” wrote Bishop Stephen Blaire. “Therefore, I strongly urge you and your colleagues to find effective ways to assure continuing Unemployment Insurance and Emergency Unemployment Compensation to protect jobless workers and their families.”

Rev. Blaire’s letter to Congress cites Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical: “The obligation to provide unemployment benefits … the duty to make suitable grants indispensable for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families, is a duty springing from the fundamental principle of … the right to life and subsistence.”

The National Employment Law Project is among a growing chorus demanding Congress extend unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts to help workers.

Starting today, Hire Your Neighbor is calling every member of our congressional delegations to urge them to stand up for people who are unemployed.

Then we’ll contact every Senator and every member of the House of Representatives, regardless of party, to demand that unemployment insurance benefits be extended.

We’re contacting each to urge that payroll tax cuts — helping so many underemployed and underpaid Americans pay their bills — be extended.

With no strings attached.

We are emailing President Barack Obama to ask, politely, that he lead on both these issues, and lead the country in finding ways to create good jobs again.

Hire Your Neighbor is urging Americans to join us in this national conversation about unemployment.

Call Congress and tell politicians to get back to the work of the people.

Don’t know the number of your senators and members of the House?  Call toll-free, 888-245-3381, and people fighting for the rights of unemployed workers will connect you with the right office.

Contact the White House — use this form — and urge President Barack Obama to stand up for the rights of people without jobs.

Related stories:  “Unemployment Insurance Under the Knife” (The Nation)

“Catholic Bishops, Other Religious Groups Lobby for Unemployment Insurance Extensions” (Huffington Post)

WANTED: Unemployed writers. NEWS: We got a donation, so we can pay!

Hire Your Neighbor wants writers.

Unemployed writers.  Under-employed writers.

We just received a $1,000 donation from Canada, anonymously, so we’ll pay.

One thousand bucks.

That’s real money.  Not the 40 cents per article we see posted on so-called freelance sites.

Tell us your story about being jobless.

Write about your impressions of the historic unemployment rate in the richest nation on earth.

If you have any solutions, tell us.  Washington and Wall St. aren’t.

We’ve started a national conversation about this, and we want all unemployed people to be a part of it.

We’ve told ours.

Tell yours.

Tell Americans with jobs about their neighbors without jobs.

Help dispel the stereotypes we hear every day, from pundits, politicians, and even, sadly, our best friends.

Help convince Americans that hiring one of the 25 million jobless in this country is not only about Wall St. or the White House.

It’s about Americans hiring neighbors.  It’s about helping each other through the worst unemployment crisis of our lifetime.

Help keep the conversation going, writers!  Get Occupied!

Stop the noise that goes nowhere by becoming part of the solution.

Hire Your Neighbor will pay $25 for each 200-word article written by anyone who’s unemployed and is brave enough to share their story.

Contact us at: hireyourneighbor@gmail.com.

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!