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States Where Unemployed Are Giving Up
Liz Wolgemuth
The high levels of discouraged workers in these states suggest people are short on hope
In some U.S. states, nearly half of the job seekers who have stopped looking for work have done so because they simply don't believe they'll find anything.
Indeed, the number of discouraged workers nationwide has more than doubled in the past year.
This trend won't be reflected in the widely publicized unemployment rate, as discouraged workers aren't included among the unemployed.
Still, in states as diverse as
Most jobless people who have stopped looking for work are otherwise engaged -- they're back in school, taking on family responsibilities, or too sick to search.
They, along with workers who have stopped because they're discouraged, make up a group that the
They're included in some of the broader measures of unemployment, but they're officially not part of the workforce. While discouraged workers make up about a third of the marginally attached nationwide, their numbers have been increasing.
Between the third quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year,
Discouraged workers are characterized by their perceptions.
They don't think work is available for them, or they believe they lack the necessary training to be hired. They may be convinced that employers think they're too young or too old, or they believe that they face some other kind of discrimination that prevents them from finding work. And while there are discouraged workers in healthy economies, in a prolonged recession such as this one, worker pessimism tends to skyrocket.
The heights of discouragement in
"It says something about the situation in that state when half of the people with a relatively recent commitment to searching for
a job have stopped because they believe nothing is available for them," says
In other states, the situation may be more obvious.
In
But higher unemployment rates and lousier job markets alone don't explain the high rates of discouragement.
Several things could nudge job seekers toward hopelessness: negative media coverage of the job market; unsuccessful job searches among friends and family; their own long-term unemployment.
Also, men are more likely to give up their job search because they've become discouraged--they make up 63 percent of the total group. Younger workers, blacks, and Hispanics are also overrepresented in the discouraged-worker category, according to the
The housing bust could be partly to blame.
Workers may simply give up because there are no openings matching their skill set within their geographical area, Krolik says.
If workers own homes they can't sell, their ability to move for a new job is severely limited. The effect could be exacerbated by areas where homes are a particularly difficult sell or homeowners are disproportionately underwater, as those markets have also tended to see higher unemployment rates.
Whatever workers' motivation, many economists are now focusing more on their results.
With 4.4 million job seekers nationwide out of work for more than 27 weeks or more in June, "those numbers are pretty grim," Bleakley says. "People who claim they're looking for work are not finding it." It's hardly surprising, then, how many have simply given up looking.
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