Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job
Many men, like Alan Beggerow, have stopped looking for work. Beggerow, of Rock Falls, Illinois, is a 53 year old man who was laid off as a steelworker at 48 and refuses to take any job that is either underpaid or demeaning. This is becoming a larger trend in men between 30-55, in the prime of their lives, who are turning down jobs which they believe to be under them and in which they are overqualified. This may seem startling because the economy is expanding and offers many new opportunities to find work. When asked why he remains jobless, Beggerow replied, "I have come to realize that my free time is worth alot more to me." This is evident in Beggerow's case in that to make ends meet he has mortgaged his house a second time, and is drawing about $7000 out of his family's saving every year. Millions of men, about 13% of men in his age group, are not working and this is up 5% from 1960. Most of the men in this group are laid off blue collar workers with nothing more than a high school education under their belt but there are some exceptions. For example, refugees of the failed Internet businesses have also spent years out of work in their thirties and are just scraping by when before they were making $100,000+ a year. The unemployment rate do not include these "missing men" because they are simply not looking for work.
6 comments:
This is so true too! I think that men need to just grit their teeth and get a job so that their families don't hv to suffer for their stubbornness that men at that age get.
Yes, their stubbornness is making it "economically unfriendly", in some cases, for their families. But if they are significantly overqualified for a job, they are not being fair to their hard work before this. They are passing up the opprotunity to make more money in the job market that is "expanding and offers many new opportunities to find work". So I would say find a job that satisfies them and their abilities, rather than be miserable and underpaid.
I can see where they should just suck it up and get a job because they have to feed their families and if they aren't willing to do it, then someone else is (more than likely someone from another country). They are not taking every opportunity they have. But, at the same time it is also not fair that these workers who are qualified to do a certain job, and have done that job for years, almost to retirment, are just thrown out without a job and are expected to find a new career at an age where they would just rather enjoy life now then let it take advantage of them again.
I can definitely see where a man wouldn't want to accept a job that he feels is below him. When it comes to having to mortgage your house a second time simply because you can't find a job that you feel is worthy of your skills I feel that is a different story. I believe that if the situation is getting that desperate the man should quit being so stubborn and take what job he can get. While he is working at that lower level job he can continue to look for another job that would make use of his skills or work his way up from that job he had to take.
After reading this post, I think we should interpret the unemployment rate more flexibly. According to Wikipedia, the unemployment rate describes the percentage of person “who is willing and able to work for pay yet is unable to find employment”, and it is an important criterion for a country’s economy. However, those who are able to work for pay but unwilling to this should not included by the definition. So I suspect whether the statistic are reliable, in other words, is that misleading to some extent, and I wonder how we should calculate the unemployment rate more accurately.
It is understandable that why these men just do not want to find new positions after lost their jobs. First, the older a man is, the more difficult it will be for him to find a new job. Living in this tech booming century, employers in most industries do not value experience so much but whether their workers have latest knowledge and the high ability of learning, so the experience that those middle-age men have seems worthless. In other words, the labor demand for middle-age workers is much lower than that for younger workers. Thus, middle-age worker are discouraged. Second, because these men have relative short expected working lives, their demand for jobs is also lower than that of younger workers, which means jobs to them are less attractive. Finally, the weights of obligations on middle-age men’s shoulders are much lighter. For one thing, middle-age workers no longer need to earn money for their children because their children have grown up and been financially independent; and middle-age worker no longer need to worry about houses because they had paid back all loans before they were out of jobs. For another thing, they can receive non-work income like interests from their savings, social securities, and money from their children, so they can lead not-bad lives without working.
Post a Comment