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Home » News, Stop Wasting America's Time

Everyone could find jobs if they were just willing to move

Submitted by Debra Legg on Thursday, 1 April 2010 2 Comments
How nice it must be to have all the answers - even if the answers keep changing when the question is whether to extend unemployment benefits.

At least unemployed workers are no longer lazy - apparently conservatives looked around, realized that true unemployment is at an all-time high of 18 percent and an additional 9.9 percent of Americans are working part-time but wanting full-time. Ticking off more than a quarter of potential voters isn't good for business in an election year.

This week, the Heritage Foundation has gone all warm, fuzzy and sympathetic. We realize you're not lazy. We know you're not looking for a handout. But, golly gee, two years of unemployment benefits is just encouraging you to stay where you are and put off the inevitable day when you'll have to move to the land where jobs flow like honey.

There's no word on where those jobs are. A call center in India, maybe? They're certainly not in the United States, where there are an estimated six people available for each open job. And, you know, if the government would allow more immigrant work visas,  those companies never would have gone off shore.

Ah, but the Heritage Foundation will feel your pain if you have to load up the moving van and head for New Delhi. "Most job losers would like to find work near where they currently live, and in their same industry or occupation. Who wants to move away from friends or family, or take a pay cut in a field in which you have less skills? Unfortunately a lot of workers will have to do just that."

I know plenty of workers who have done just that during past downturns - witness the number of displaced West Virginians in the 70s and North Carolina in the 1980s. But then, unlike now, workers weren't leaving behind underwater mortgages along with family and friends.

Problem is, there's no where to go this time. Except maybe India.

Heritage Foundation, Stop Wasting America's Time with patronizing, simplistic solutions that have no basis in the reality that most job-seekers live every day.

Copyright 2010 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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2 Comments »

  • MtnMom said:

    Whoo boy! Extremes in all directions! So who is going to cough up the dough for the unemployed to relocate overseas where our jobs are being outsourced to? Sheesh!

    - 1 April 2010 at 8:38 pm
  • Debra said:

    For that matter, who is going to pay for them to relocate to that job they’re competing with five other people for domestically?

    I get the foundation’s deeper, underlying message: That the economy has dramatically changed and workers will have to adapt. They’re right about that. Many economists believe it hasn’t finished changing – I read a great piece by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich last week that said no one really knows where this all is going.

    That’s why pat answers such as “just move to where there are jobs” really bug me. OK, so where are the jobs, what are they, how do workers learn them and how do they finance the move after they lose their shirts on their underwater homes?

    - 2 April 2010 at 12:42 pm