The Boston Globe covers a MIT professor who is looking at how to help the long-term unemployed:
MIT professor Ofer Sharone hopes to solve a dark problem that few even want to discuss: how to help the long-term unemployed.
More than four years after the last recession ended, long-term unemployment remains near record levels, with 4.1 million Americans out of work for more than six months and still struggling to find jobs. What makes the problem so vexing, Sharone said, is these workers, typically older, have qualifications that should provide the path to employment, namely experience, accomplishment, and college degrees.
“You can’t just say go get an education because these people are often educated.” he said. “It’s scary because there’s not an obvious, easy solution.”
Sharone, however, is daring to try to find one. Later this month, he will launch a project called the Institute for Career Transitions, an organization to help the long-term unemployed, focusing on 40- to 65-year-old workers with college degrees. The institute will begin by pairing them with career counselors or job coaches, free of charge, for three months.
Sharone and his researchers will also try to build a better understanding of long-term unemployment and approaches that might help overcome its challenges and barriers. They will study the moods, health, and levels of depression among participants, examining how long-term unemployment — and repeated disappointments — affect them, their motivation, and ability to get back to work.I think the problem of the long-term unemployed will only become more problematic in the future. Best wishes to Professor Sharone and his project, and best wishes to all of us.
Glad that Prof. Sharone is taking on this beast and I wish him good luck! Let me say few cents worth and am not even from MIT. I am a hardworking organic and medicinal chemist by training. My job and as well as that of many others simply disappeared for no apparent reason and all to please the so called heartless share holders. And, phantom jobs were created by big pharmaceutical companies that when people applied for, no body heard anything! These jobs are not coming back and they have just simply evaporated. I have no illusion about it! A generation of Americans trained to do a specific job (i.e. science based drug discovery) has been relegated to do meaningless and minimum pay jobs (still thankful for the same!). That has been the often repeated story and I wonder what more this Prof. from MIT is going to help us learn. When he does learn, perhaps it will be too late for many. That said, good luck to all!
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, what should be done is to collect all of the unemployed biologists and chemists and have them work on solving the problem of multiple drug resistant bacteria. We could get all of the faculty no longer receiving grants to direct us.....maybe....
ReplyDeleteThe anecdotal evidence is that you need a job to get a job and the longer you're unemployed, the harder it is to get hired.
ReplyDelete