The Stereo Type of the Unemployed

If you never been unemployed, then you don’t know what it is like to be unemployed. I hear all kinds of stories about how the unemployed people are making a killing by going on vacation, not working, and hanging out, and just enjoying life while everyone else has to go to work. The unemployed get free money according to the ignorant. When you question some of these people who tell you these stories, you find out that they got their information second and third hand about people who they don’t know. Sometimes they are talking about a real person but that person is telling others stories about their good unemployment fortunes to save face.

I became friends with this woman who was going to Alabama to see her relatives and wanted me to look after her tomato plants while she was away. I asked her what line of work she was in. She told me that she works for the US Army. That sounded reasonable because a US Army sticker was on her very expensive truck. But she seam to always be home. About a month later, she told me that she was moving to Atlanta because she was tired of waiting for the US Government to give her a job. Then she told me that she is unemployed. It was only one day after she moved; the constable came and placed a notice on her door to appear in court for failure to pay her rent.

The long term unemployed has other problems even if they go back to work. If they have a good skill and can find a job within a year, they will probably take a pay cut. However, they may come back to their pre-unemployment income level before they retire. That is if they are young enough and in the right field of work.

If you are over 40 years of age, have little skills that are in demand, have a criminal record, have bad credit, and have been unemployed for over one year, chances are, you may never see the type of money that you made before unemployment started for you.

To add pain to injury for the people getting ready to retire, your social security check is calculated on your ending years of working. You don’t work so your Social Security check is drastically reduced from the time you start receiving until you die.

Read the following article called “Unemployed risk a permanent pay cut.”

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/06/news/economy/unemployed_income/index.htm?iid=Lead

“Unemployed risk a permanent pay cut” written By Chris Isidore @CNNMoney October 6, 2011